Wilde Quotes - Page 3

• I would have liked to have known Oscar Wilde because I think he must have been very amusing and entertaining.

  Truman Capote

  Thinking, Oscars, Amusing

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As Oscar Wilde should have said, when bad ideas have nowhere else to go, they emigrate to America and become university courses.

  Frederic Raphael

  Should Have, Ideas, America

  10 Copy quote

• The last couple of roles I missed out on went to Jennifer Hudson, Jessica Biel and Olivia Wilde.

  Amy Schumer

  Couple, Roles, Olivia

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wit isn't a useful instrument of defense; it may make a short-run appeal, but it creates a backlash- one saw this in the Hiss case and the Oppenheimer hearings; certainly one saw it in the trial of Oscar Wilde.

  Diana Trilling

  Running, Saws, Defense

  6 Copy quote

• So who's perfect? ... Washington had false teeth. Franklin was nearsighted. Mussolini had syphilis. Unpleasant things have been said about Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde. Tchaikovsky had his problems, too. And Lincoln was constipated.

  John O'Hara

  Tchaikovsky, Perfect, Syphilis

  9 Copy quote

• William Congreve is the only sophisticated playwright England has produced; and like Shaw, Sheridan, and Wilde, his nearest rivals, he was brought up in Ireland.

  Kenneth Tynan

  Rivals, England, Sophisticated

  Kenneth Tynan (1961). “Curtains: Selections from the Drama Criticism and Related Writings”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that's all. I don't know if he's right, but I do know that I spend a long time existing, and now, I intend to live.

  Robyn

  Long, People, World

  7 Copy quote

• Oscar Wilde always makes me smile - with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of Wildes books in a bookshop makes me smile.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Sarcastic, Book, Cynical

  4 Copy quote

• The only thing in the world worse than being Oscar Wilde is not being Oscar Wilde.

  Oscar Wilde

  World, Oscars

  4 Copy quote

• "Art Imitates life," of course, is that phrase by Oscar Wilde. I called that song "Art Imitates Life" because Oh No was in the studio and he actually came up with that hook. When I was trying to figure out a name for the record, it just kind of made sense.

  Talib Kweli

  Song, Art, Names

  Interview with Paul D. Miller, www.marandapleasantmedia.com. April 7, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Play doesn't have to be a frivolous thing. You may think of a Beethoven symphony as something serious, but it's still being played. I think Oscar Wilde said that life is too important to be taken seriously.

  Jeff Bridges

  Taken, Thinking, Play

  "Jeff Bridges and his Buddhist teacher ruminate on life". Interview with Bernie Glassman, www.today.com. January 8, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We all exist in similar systems that mirror and reproduce the same American culture for the most part. What Oscar Wilde said about the lucky author who has a non-literary day job no longer holds, if it ever did. Artists seek validation as much as they seek money. The creation and invention of culture and canon is where most of the trouble lies.

  Fady Joudah

  Jobs, Lying, Artist

  Source: therumpus.net

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A refusal of nature as a model is a tradition that goes right back to Oscar Wilde.

  Todd Haynes

  Oscars, Tradition, Refusal

  Source: www.avclub.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It completely sickens me what our culture is doing to women. Last week I wore a big top and little shorts and a bunch of stuff came out saying I was without pants. 'The No-Pants Look,' it said. And I didn't go out without pants, I had shorts on... If Olivia Wilde had gone to a party with a big silky top and little shorts she might have been told her outfit was cute... What it was really: 'Why did you show us your thighs?'

  Lena Dunham

  Cute, Party, Gone

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The opulence of Wilde is a bit too florid for Sherlock, who is a much darker character, ... fascinated by the human condition, but also overwhelmed by it.

  Rupert Everett

  Character, Opulence, Overwhelmed

  4 Copy quote

• Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.

  Harold Bloom

  Art, Reading, Sublime

  Harold Bloom (2014). “The Western Canon”, p.31, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man like Wilde was not free to live out of the closet as a homosexual, and women in general were not able to be truly themselves; there was no place for a woman's voice to be heard or for her to express her sexuality.

  Marisa Tomei

  Men, Voice, Able

  7 Copy quote

• By the respectable terms of the modern literary profession, novelists do not preach. And, in fact, there has probably not been a less respectable novelist among the irrefutably enduring writers of our time than Ayn Rand: philosopher queen of the best-seller lists in the forties and fifties, cult phenomenon and nationally declared threat to public morality in the sixties, guru to the Libertarians and to White House economic policy in the seventies, and a continuing exemplar or Wilde's tragic observation that more than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

  Claudia Roth

  Queens, White, House

  4 Copy quote

• The Chinese general Sun Tzu said that all war was based on deception. Oscar Wilde said the same thing of romance.

  Marco Tempest

  War, Romance, Deception

  "The magic of truth and lies (and iPods)". TED Talk, www.ted.com. July 2011.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a homely directness about these rustic apothegms which makes them far more palatable than the strained and sophisticated epigrams of the characters of Oscar Wilde's plays, who are ever striving strenuously to dazzle us with verbal pyrotechnics.

  Brander Matthews

  Character, Play, Oscars

  6 Copy quote

• What a lurid life Oscar Wilde does lead - so full of extraordinary incidents. What a chance for the memoir writers of the next century

  Max Beerbohm

  Oscars, Next, Doe

  4 Copy quote

• A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish.

  Emma Goldman

  Oscars, Anarchy, Foolish

  Emma Goldman (1969). “Anarchism: And Other Essays”, p.49, Courier Corporation

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• A ready means of being cherished by the English is to adopt the simple expedient of living a long time. I have little doubt that if, say, Oscar Wilde had lived into his nineties, instead of dying in his forties, he would have been considered a benign, distinguished figure suitable to preside at a school prize-giving or to instruct and exhort scout masters at their jamborees. He might even have been knighted.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  School, Mean, Simple

  Malcolm Muggeridge, Ian Hunter (2003). “The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge”, p.40, Regent College Publishing

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• But here's the thing about being honest: All the liars HATE you for it, and most of the people in the world are liars. They lie to their bosses, they lie to their families, they lie to themselves, they lie so much they don't even know they're lying anymore. If you have the courage to be honest even a little bit all those people will hate you for it, because their lie is reflected in your honesty. Oscar Wilde wasn't kidding when he said, "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

  Tucker Max

  Honesty, Lying, Hate

  30 Copy quote

• 'He's the most charming man. He's the Oscar Wilde of our time. I only had one moment with him in that film and it's a great source of regret. I love spending time with him. He's always very open and effusive. His interest in you is genuine.'

  Russell Crowe

  Regret, Men, Oscars

  33 Copy quote