Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities

Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.

Neither at things, nor at people should one look. Only in mirrors should one look, for mirrors do but show us masks.

Sometime you will find, even as I have found, that there is no such thing as romantic experience; there are romantic memories, and there is the desire of romance- that is all. Our most fiery moments of ecstasy are merely shadows of what somewhere else we have felt, or of what we long someday to feel

I really don't see what is so romantic about proposing. One may be accepted - one usually is, I believe - and then the excitement is ended. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

What the artist is always looking for is the mode of existence in which soul and body are one and indivisible: in which the outward is expressive of the inward: in which form reveals.

MRS ALLONBY I adore them. The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk. HESTER I think the stupid people talk a great deal. MRS ALLONBY Ah, I never listen!

In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you

It was you I thought of all the time, I gave to them the love you did not need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs.

The supreme vice is shallowness.

My dear Arthur, I never talk scandal. I only talk gossip. What is the difference between scandal and gossip? Oh! Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are: by which we can see life as a whole, by which and by which alone we can understand others in their real and their ideal relation. Only what is fine, and finely conceived can feed love. But anything will feed hate.