Quotes from Oscar Wilde

I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. (Mr. Dumby, Act III)

Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties.

I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do - the day after.

I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.

One should always be in love. That's the reason one should never marry.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.

The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one's heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one's heart to stone.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.

If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.

I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!