Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892, Act I

One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead.
Oscar Wilde, L’Envoi, 1882

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 1905

The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.
Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, Act 3

One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, part 2, 1891

Vile deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air, it is only what is good in man, that wastes and withers there.
Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892, Act III

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

Better never than late.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich–something for nothing.