Quote

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised.

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
Degrading
Degrade
Authority
Exercise
Quite
Degrades
Exercised

More quotes by Oscar Wilde

Image
He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize
Oscar Wilde
Image
You can never be overdressed or overeducated.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard Some do it with a bitter look Some with a flattering word The coward does it with a kiss The brave man with a sword
Oscar Wilde
Image
You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. living, as you all do, on other and by them, you need at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season.
Oscar Wilde
Image
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Oscar Wilde
Image
The camera, you know, will never capture you. Photography, in my experience, has the miraculous power of transferring wine into water.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable
Oscar Wilde
Image
Some things are more precious because they don't last long.
Oscar Wilde
Image
People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.
Oscar Wilde
Image
The sin was mine I did not understand. So now is music prisoned in her cave, Save where some ebbing desultory wave Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you will intensify its ecstasy.
Oscar Wilde
Image
We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken.
Oscar Wilde
Image
The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Nothing worth knowing can be taught.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it comes into existence.
Oscar Wilde
Image
The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Come, dear, [Gwendolen rises] we have already missed five, if not six, trains. To miss any more might expose us to comment on the platform.
Oscar Wilde
Image
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight.
Oscar Wilde
Image
Just be your self. Everybody else is already taken.
Oscar Wilde
Image
What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless.
Oscar Wilde