523 Famous Quotes by Oscar Wilde
10/16/1854 - 11/30/1900
Also Known As:
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
Oscar. Wilde
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About Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams and plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment which was followed by his early death.
Wilde's parents were successful Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day.
The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.
Purity
Quotes, by Oscar Wilde
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Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Quotes
Quotes, by Oscar Wilde
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Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
Senses
Quotes, by Oscar Wilde
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The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Sin
Quotes, by Oscar Wilde
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To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.
Tact
Quotes, by Oscar Wilde
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Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
Taxes
Quotes, by Oscar Wilde
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The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.
Theater
Quotes, by Oscar Wilde
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It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.
Tragedy
Quotes, by Oscar Wilde
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The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women merely adored.
Women
Quotes, by Oscar Wilde
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And thus we rust Life's iron chain Degraded and alone: And some men curse, and some men weep, And some men make no moan: But God's eternal Laws are kind And break the heart of stone. And every human heart that breaks, In prison-cell or yard, Is as that broken box that gave Its treasure to the Lord, And filled the unclean leper's house With the scent of costliest nard. Ah! happy they whose hearts can break And peace of pardon win! How else may man make straight his plan And cleanse his soul from sin? How else but through a broken heart May Lord Christ enter in?
Christianity
Quotes, by Oscar Wilde
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Feast of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1170 Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach Thy hand For I am drowning in a stormier sea Than Simon on the the lake of Galilee: The wine of life is spilt upon the sand, My heart is as some famine-murdered land Whence all good things have perished utterly, And well I know my soul in Hell must lie If I this night before God's throne must stand. "He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase, Like Baal, when his prophets holed that name From morn to noon on Carmel's smitten height." Nay, peace! I shall behold, before the night, The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame, The wounded hands, the weary human face.
Christianity
Quotes, by Oscar Wilde
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