"To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."
Read quote
32 likes
Quote collection
Oscar Wilde quotes (page 14 of 93)
1.9K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful."
Read quote
32 likes
"Tread Lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow."
Read quote
32 likes
"Circumstances should never alter principles!"
Read quote
31 likes
"When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve."
Read quote
31 likes
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness."
Read quote
31 likes
"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
Read quote
31 likes
"In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience."
Read quote
31 likes
"Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. It seeks to show new perspectives and other choices. It is a way to help expand and liberate the consciousness; our experiences, understandings, imaginings, options and thereby our lives."
Read quote
31 likes
"In fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.... The Japanese people are ... simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art."
Read quote
31 likes
"The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves."
Read quote
31 likes
"Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul."
Read quote
31 likes
"Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions."
Read quote
31 likes
"Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself."
Read quote
31 likes
"Everything in moderation, including moderation."
Read quote
30 likes
"I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts."
Read quote
30 likes
"Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible. Aesthetics, like sensual selection, make life lovely and wonderful, fill it with new forms, and give it progress, and variety and change."
Read quote
30 likes
"Outcasts always mourn."
Read quote
30 likes
"Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties."
Read quote
29 likes
"Thinking is wonderful, but the experience is even more wonderful."
Read quote
29 likes