"If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward."
OS
Oscar Wilde
140 quotes
Quotes by Oscar Wilde
"True friends stab you in the front."
"There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing."
"No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone."
"You can never be overdressed or overeducated."
"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."
"Hearts Live By Being Wounded"
"Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force."
"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship."
"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one."
"This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last."
"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship."
"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known."
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
"The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study."
"nothing that is worth knowing can be taught"
"So with curious eyes and sick surmiseWe watched him day by day,And wondered if each one of usWould end the self-same way,For none can tell to what red HellHis sightless soul may stray."
"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction."
"Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness."
"I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability."