Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 65

• No gentleman ever has any money.

  Oscar Wilde

  Gentleman

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “The Importance of Being Earnest: Revised Edition”, p.159, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beautiful, Book, Mean

  The Picture of Dorian Gray preface (1891)

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• I never play cricket. It requires one to assume such indecent postures.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Sarcastic, Inspiration

  His reason for not playing cricket. Quoted in Bloomsbury Thematic Dictionary of Quotations (1988)

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• It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Truth, Gossip

  A Woman of No Importance act 1 (1893)

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• Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.

  Oscar Wilde

  Writing, Ignorance, Three

  Intentions "The Critic as Artist" pt. 1 (1891)

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• Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.

  Oscar Wilde

  Intelligent, Found

  Oscar Wilde (2014). “Wilde Complete Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest; A Woman of No Importance; Salome; The Duchess of Padua; Vera, or the Nihilists; A Florentine Tragedy; La Sainte Courtisane”, p.41, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• There is something very morbid about modern sympathy with pain.

  Oscar Wilde

  Sympathy, Pain, Morbid

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• I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.

  Oscar Wilde

  World Suffering, Gray, Dorian Grey

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.46, Diversion Books

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• The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.

  Oscar Wilde

  Regret, Luxury, Done

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.23, Diversion Books

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• The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Hypocrite, Men, Ideas

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Story of a Fashionable Young Man Who Sells His Soul for Eternal Youth and Beauty (Beloved Books Edition)”, p.15, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I don't mind plain women being puritans. It is the only excuse they have for being plain.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mind, Excuse, Puritan

  Oscar Wilde (1986). “The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays”

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• The only proper intoxication is conversation.

  Oscar Wilde

  Conversation, Intoxication, Drunkenness

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.152, Wordsworth Editions

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• Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age.

  Oscar Wilde

  Age, Ethics, Morality

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (with an Essay by Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly)”, p.50, Mondial

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• We women adore failures. They lean on us.

  Oscar Wilde

  Failure, Adore

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “A Woman of No Importance”, p.21, Oscar Wilde

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• The sure way of knowing nothing about life is to try to make oneself useful.

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Knowing Nothing, Trying

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)”, p.1488, Delphi Classics

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• Tell the cook of this restaurant with my compliments that these are the very worst sandwiches in the whole world, and that, when I ask for a watercress sandwich, I do not mean a loaf with a field in the middle of it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Sarcastic, Mean

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• Really, if the lower orders don't set a good example, what on earth is the use of them?

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Sarcastic, Order

  'The Importance of Being Earnest' (1895) act 1

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• Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Sarcastic, People

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “An Ideal Husband”, p.51, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Sarcastic, Nice

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “An Ideal Husband”, p.68, Oscar Wilde

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• The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Sarcastic, Wine

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.123, Wordsworth Editions

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• The General was essentially a man of peace, except in his domestic life.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny Relationship, Men, Luck

  Oscar Wilde, Peter Raby (2008). “The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.306, Oxford Paperbacks

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• And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory; and grasp the tail that like a monstrous asp coils round your heavy velvet paws.

  Oscar Wilde

  Cat, Ivory, Yellow

  Oscar Wilde (2014). “Poems”, p.105, Simon and Schuster

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• You know what a woman's curiosity is.

  Oscar Wilde

  Curiosity, Knows

  Oscar Wilde (2008). “The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.171, OUP Oxford

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• The British cook, for her iniquities, is a foolish woman who should be turned into a pillar of salt which she never knows how to use.

  Oscar Wilde

  Pillars, Culture, Use

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• Give me the luxuries and I can dispense with the necessities.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Witty, Luxury

  Oscar Wilde (1999). “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Holt McDougal

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