Oscar Wilde

“Alas, I am dying beyond my means.”

“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.”

“There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate - not to th...”

“Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.”

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

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

“Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.”

“Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.”

“Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.”

“The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.”

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

“Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.”

“I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.”

“In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming,...”

“Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.”

“Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.”

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

“A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.”

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

“It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.”