INTRODUCTION

I have always loved the great poet, playwright, and asthete Oscar Wilde, and thought that (just for the hell of it, you know) I'd share what I believe to be the best of Oscars wit and wisdom.

Additionally, I would like to add that however ardently I may wish I owned Oscar, or had had anything to do with the creation of these beautiful and brilliantly knitted-together words you are about to read, I could not.

Everything is Oscar's.


The poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

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

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

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

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

There is no sin except stupidity.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

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

Who, being loved, is poor?

Women are made to be loved, not understood.