The Best of Oscar Wilde

 

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
 
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
 
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
 
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
 
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
 
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
 
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
 
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
 
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
 
I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
 
If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.
 
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
 
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
 
Life is too important to be taken seriously.
 
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
 
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
 
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
 
Of course America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
 
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
 
Only the shallow know themselves.
 
Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
 
Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.
 
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
 
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
 
The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
 
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.
 
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
 
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
 
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
 
There is no sin except stupidity.
 
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
 
There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.
 
There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.
 
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
 
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
 
When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

Who, being loved, is poor?
 
Women are made to be loved, not understood.