Quotes from Oscar Wilde

A true gentlemen is one who is never unintentionally rude.

I know not whether laws be right, Or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol Is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long.

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

It is not the prisoners who need reformation, it is the prisons.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

I've put my genius into my life; I've only put my talent into my works.

You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that... The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame. That is all.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

Do you really think... that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one's life on a single moment... there is no weakness in that.

With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.

God grant me the serenity to accept that people are ignorant, the courage to uphold the law when I'm hostile, & the wisdom to realize that murder is illegal.

Wisdom is to have dreams big enough not to lose sight when we pursue them.