Quote

There is only good art and mediocre art.

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
Mediocre
Art
Good

More quotes by Oscar Wilde

Image
Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.
Oscar Wilde
Image
In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it.
Oscar Wilde
Image
The Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says.
Oscar Wilde
Image
My dear Arthur, I never talk scandal. I only talk gossip. What is the difference between scandal and gossip? Oh! Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
Oscar Wilde
Image
I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.
Oscar Wilde
Image
To define is to limit.
Oscar Wilde
Image
The unread is always better than the unreadable.
Oscar Wilde
Image
More than half of modern culture depends upon what one shouldn't read.
Oscar Wilde
Image
As I lounged in the Park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used to look at everyone who passed me, and wonder, with mad curiosity, what sort of lives they led. some of them fascinated me. Others filled me with terror.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.
Oscar Wilde
Image
A man who moralizes is a hypocrite, and a woman who does so is invariably plain.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
Oscar Wilde
Image
We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates.
Oscar Wilde
Image
I see the moon like a clipped piece of silver. Like gilded bees the stars cluster round her.
Oscar Wilde
Image
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
Oscar Wilde
Image
What a fuss people make about fidelity! exclaimed Lord Henry. Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.
Oscar Wilde
Image
The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.
Oscar Wilde