Quotations from
Oscar Wilde
[1854-1900]

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet, and author, known for his witty epigrams, his flamboyant dress & behavior, and for the tragic final chapters of his life.

Links are provided below for further investigation.
The references to WMail issues indicate quotes that appeared in the free monthly 'WMail' ezine
connected with the revolutionary "Working Minds Philosophy of Empowerment" created by G.E. Nordell.

After WMail Issue #72 in October 2007, essays & quotations & news are being posted to the Dateline Chamesa blog

Oscar Wilde entry at Wikipedia

Oscar Wilde credits [200 titles; since 1908] at Internet Movie Database

"Complete Works of Oscar Wilde" for Kindle [2011] Kindle Edition from Delphi Classics [4/2011] for $1.99 includes: ten stageplays, Complete Poetry {chronological index, aphabetical index}, novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" [1890] {3 versions}, three short story collections, 20 non-fiction works, journalism, and biographies by Frank Harris, George Bernard Shaw, and Edgar Saltus

“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”  {Issue #45}
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“Murder is always a mistake – one should never do anything [that] one cannot talk about after dinner.”
(in "The Picture of Dorian Gray", 1891)  {blog 12/2007}
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“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”  {blog 9/2008}
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“The trouble with socialism is that it would take too many evenings.”  {blog 2/2009}
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“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.”  {blog 4/2009}
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“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”  {blog 9/2009 & 3/2020}
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“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.”  {blog 10/2009}
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“With an evening coat and a white tie, even a stockbroker can gain a reputation
for being civilized.”  {blog 11/2009}
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“I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.”  {blog 1/2010}
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“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”  {blog 7/2010}
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“Be yourself, everyone else is taken.”  {blog 10/2010}
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“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”  {blog 3/2011}
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“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that
nothing worth knowing can be taught.”  {blog 8/2011}
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“All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment.”  {blog 9/2011}
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“An idea that isn't dangerous is hardly worth calling an idea at all.”  {blog 10/2011}
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“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”  {blog 10/2011}
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“When I am happy I am always good, but when I am good I am seldom happy.”  {blog 1/2012}
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“When I was young, I used to think that money was the most important thing in life.
Now that I'm old, I know it is.”  {blog 5/2012}
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“To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled
into security is to die.”  {blog 6/2012}
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“Forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them more.”  {blog 6/2012}
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”  {blog 11/2016}
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“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”  {blog 9/2012}
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“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”  {blog 11/2012}
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“One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art.”  {blog 11/2012}
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“True friends stab you in the front.”  {blog 12/2012}
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“Experience is the name [that] so many people give to their mistakes.”  {blog 5/2013}
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“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”  {blog 12/2013}
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“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
- in "Lady Windermere’s Fan" (1892 stageplay)  {blog 8/2014}
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“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”  {blog 9/2014}
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“Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”  {blog 6/2015}
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“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”  {blog 7/2015}
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“Rugby is a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the center of the city.”  {blog 10/2015}
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“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.”
— in the 1893 stageplay "A Woman of No Importance"  {blog 12/2015}
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“A visionary is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world.”  {blog 2/2016}
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“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist.”  {blog 10/2016}
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“The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.”  {blog 11/2016}
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“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”  {blog 3/2017}
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“I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.”  {blog 4/2017}
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“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again there is no use reading it at all.”  {blog 9/2017}
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“Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.”  {blog 1/2018}
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“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”  {blog 3/2018}
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“I am not young enough to know everything.”  {blog 3/2018}
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“If you want to be a doormat you have to lay yourself down first.”  {blog 5/2018}
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“Luxury is the opposite of mediocrity.”  {blog 6/2018}
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“Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.”  {blog 12/2018}
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“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”  {blog 8/2019}
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“The whole truth pure and simple? The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”  {blog 12/2019}
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“Make people laugh when you tell them the truth, or they will kill you.”  {blog 2/2021}
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“When good Americans die, they go to heaven; if they've been very good, they go to Paris.”  {blog 1/2022}
~~ paraphrase of Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
“Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.”  {blog 1/2022}
~~ American artist Thomas Gold Appleton [1812-84]
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“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”  {blog 7/2024}

Oscar Wilde Quotations Not Yet Used on the Blog

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