Oscar Wilde

“A cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

“A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection.”

“[Action] is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.”

“Always forgive your enemies--nothing annoys them so much.”

“Anyone can make history. Only a great man can write it.”

“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”

“Bad artists always admire each other's work.”

“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

“Education is an admirable thing, but nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”

“Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.”

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

“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked, and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”

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

“One's only real life is the life one never leads.”

“Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.”

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”

“The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”

“The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.”

“The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.”

“The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.”

“The vilest deeds like poison weeds

Bloom well in prison-air:

It is only what is good in Man

That wastes and withers there.”

“The worst vice of the fanatic is his sincerity.”

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.”

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

“We are all in the gutter. But some of us are looking at the stars.”

“We live in an age that reads too much to be wise.”

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

“Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.”