Oscar Wilde’s words of wisdom and wit
Valentina Tenedini
Irishman, poet, playwright and author
on Popularity There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
I am so clever that sometimes I don’t uderstand a single word I am saying.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Fashion is what one wears Unfashionable is what others wear.
You can never be overdressed or overeducated
American lessons I have nothing to declare exept my genius. America had often been discovered before Columbus but it had always been hushed up.
As soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all. • Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember, from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. • Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching. • Children have a natural antipathy to booksHandicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.
BOOKS ARE WELL WRITTEN OR BADLY WRITTEN THAT’S ALL • It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you are when you can’t help it. • If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again there is no use in reading it at all. • The books that the word calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
Art is the most intense mode of individualism the world has known. It is through art and art only that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic has to educate the public the artist has to educate the critic.
Art is at once surface and symbol those who go beneath the surface, do so at their own peril
• All art is quite useless • Lying, the telling of untrue things, is the proper aim of art. • No work of art ever puts forward views • Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it but moulds it to its purpose. • Poets you know are always ahead of science.
Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods.. • Pathos leaves the artist unmoved. But beauty, real beauty, can fill his eyes with tears. • It seems to me we all look at nature too much and live with her too little. • They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
The world is a stage but the play is badly cast • Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth. • Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes. • We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Most people are other people. WICKEDNESS is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others. There is no sin except STUPIDITY. The well-bred contradict other people. The WISE CONTRADICT THEMSELVES. I always pass on GOOD ADVICE. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never any use to oneself. One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
Being natural is simply a pose. • The truth is rarely pure and never simple • Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion. • A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. • If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh or they’ll kill you. • Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities. • I have the simplest tastes I am only satisfied with the best • A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
• Ordinary riches can be stolen, in your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you. • Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
I think God in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability. When we are happy, we are always good but when we are good, we are not always happy. Always forgive your enemies nothing annoys them so much. The true mystery of the world is the visible not the invisible
For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is SIMPLE and the simple thing is the RIGHT thing. To LIVE is the rarest thing in the world most people just EXIST.
Who, being loved, is poor? To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance. One should always be in love. That is the reason why one should never marry. Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary. With freedom, books, flowers and the moon, who could not be happy? It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.
All great ideas are dangerous • An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. • Everything popular is wrong. • Life is too important to be taken seriously. • Be yourself everyone else is taken.