Oscar Wilde

Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear. Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people. And falsehoods the truths of other people. Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself. To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.

You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any.

Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.

I played with an idea, and grew willful; tossed it into the air; transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left. ALGERNON: We have. JACK: I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about? ALGERNON: The fools? Oh! about the clever people of course. JACK: What fools.

The only proper intoxication is conversation.

Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.

Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Reported as Oscar Wilde's last words on his death bed... This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.