Music makes one feel so romantic – at least it always gets on one’s nerves – which is the same thing nowadays.

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative

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

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892, Act III

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

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Oscar Wilde, An Ideal husband, 1893

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.

Wisdom comes with winters.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

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

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

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.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891