Oscar Wilde

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.

Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness.

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

I never approve or disapprove of anything. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life.

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

The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy.

Memory, like a dwelling-place, is a house of many mansions.

The very soul of the man is to be found in his art.

The only duty we have to history is to rewrite it.

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for.

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.

The world has been made by fools that wise men may live in it.

The only thing that can be said in favour of a life of idleness is that it gives one time to think.

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

The very basis of the aesthetic attitude is the recognition of the truth that Art has no other aim but her own perfection, and that the only value of a work of art is its intrinsic value.

The very basis of the aesthetic attitude is the rejection of the commonplace.