Quote

The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.

Oscar Wilde

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Oscar Wilde
Age: 46 †
Born: 1854
Born: October 16
Died: 1900
Died: November 30
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Dublin city
Oscar O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
Useless
Admire
Excuse
Quite
Making
Art
Thing
Admires
Intensely

More quotes by Oscar Wilde

Image
It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .
Oscar Wilde
Image
JACK Your duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNON My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.
Oscar Wilde
Image
The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Truth is independent of facts always.
Oscar Wilde
Image
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
Image
When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve.
Oscar Wilde
Image
But what of life whose bitter hungry sea Flows at our heels, and gloom of sunless night Covers the days which never more return? Ambition, love and all the thoughts that burn We lose too soon, and only find delight In withered husks of some dead memory.
Oscar Wilde
Image
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
Oscar Wilde
Image
And suddenly the moon withdraws her sickle from the lightening skies, and to her sombre cavern flies, wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.
Oscar Wilde
Image
What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?
Oscar Wilde
Image
There is one thing worse than an absolutely loveless marriage: a marriage in which there is love, but on one side only.
Oscar Wilde
Image
There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.
Oscar Wilde
Image
An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.
Oscar Wilde
Image
The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1.322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26.911 words. The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
Oscar Wilde
Image
The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us. In art, as in politics, les grand-pères ont toujours tort.
Oscar Wilde
Image
I wrote when I did not know life now that I do know the meaning of life, I have no more to write. Life cannot be written life can only be lived.
Oscar Wilde
Image
When people talk to me about the weather, I always feel they mean something else.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Sins of the flesh are nothing. They are maladies for physicians to cure, if they should be cured. Sins of the soul alone are shameful.
Oscar Wilde