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For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making, and rendering success impossible by their own cross-grained ungentleness; whilst others, it may be much less gifted, make their way and achieve success by simple patience, equanimity, and self-control.

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Jun 12, 2026

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Genius is an infinite capacity for giving pains.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Quote Author: Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (October 16, 1854 - November 30, 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and author of short stories. Known for his barbed wit, he was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. As the result of a famous trial, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years of hard labour after being convicted of the offence of "gross indecency."

Other Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde Quotes

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

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

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

I am not young enough to know everything.

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

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.

Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.

Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.

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

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.

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

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

Who, being loved, is poor?

All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

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.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.

I couldn't help it. I can resist everything except temptation.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. The change will, of course, be slow, and people will not be conscious of it.

The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But....it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic? Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.

Cecily: When I see a spade I call it a spade. Gwendolen: I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

Art never expresses anything but itself.

Those things which the English public never forgives - youth, power and enthusiasm.

Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance.

No, my Lord Cardinal, I weary of her! Why, she is worse than ugly, she is good.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

The final revelation is that lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of art.

At the New York Customs: I have nothing to declare except my genius.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

That little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

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

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

Men can be analyzed, women... merely adored.

Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

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

I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.

This wallpaper is dreadful. One of us has simply got to go.

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

I am not young enough to know everything. [see J. M. Barrie]

My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.

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

Beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.

I can believe anything, provided it is quite incredible.

Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Genius is born, not paid.

Action is the last refuge of those who cannot dream.

The only thing one can do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Argument are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.

Art is the most intense mode of invidualism that the world has known.

Bad artists always admire each others work.

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

If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's coversation.

And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, The hand that held the steel: For only blood can wipe out blood, And only tears can heal.

Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever, do they forgive them.

Crying is the refuge of plain women, but the ruin of pretty ones.

Every woman is wrong until she cries.

If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

None of us can stand other people who have the same faults as ourselves.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing.

Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them quite so much.

With an evening coat and a white tie, anybody, even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for being civilized.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

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

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

The longer I live the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us.

It’s always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

And alien tears will fill for him Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn.

The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passions are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.

Lord Darlington (LD): I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules. Lady Windemere (LW): If we had `hard-and-fast rules' we would find life much simpler. LD: You allow of no exceptions? LW: None! LD: Ah, what a fascinating Puritan you are, LW. LW: The adjective was unnecessary, LD.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Insincerity is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

It's either the wallpaper or me. One of us has to go. [These were his dying words.]

Men always want to be a woman's first love; women have a more subtle instinct: what they like is to be a man's last romance.

When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her. When one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself. And one ends by deceiving others. This is what the world calls a romance.

Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.

Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious, both are disappointed.

The only way a woman can ever reform her husband is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

When I was young, I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it is.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people whom we personally dislike.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex.

If God really wanted to punish, he'd answer all our prayers.

Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes.

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.

Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilization.

Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

When one is in love one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always ends by deceiving others. This is what the world calls a romance.

'I was saying,' continued the Rocket, 'I was saying — What was I saying?' 'You were talking about yourself,' replied the Roman Candle. 'Of course; I knew I was discussing some interesting subject when I was so rudely interrupted.'

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it.

Only the shallow know themselves.

The story of mankind began in a garden and ended in revelations.

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age.... The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring; I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men and the colour of things: there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder.... I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode of fiction: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram.

We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.

I can resist everything except temptation.

To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.

In this world there are only two tragedies: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

A visionary is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world.

As long as war is looked upon as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked on as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.

Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends up blocking his retreat.

Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

Genius is an infinite capacity for giving pains.

Genius learns from nature, its own nature. Talent learns from art.

The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.

The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

Life is too important to be taken seriously.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Music makes one feel so romantic — at least it always gets on one's nerves — which is the same thing nowadays.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

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

Some people cause happiness wherever they go. Some people cause happiness whenever they go.

Punctuality is the thief of time.

Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Some temptations are so great it takes great courage to yield to them.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists of the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.

There is no such thing as good influence.

To influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.

To get back one's youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies.

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