Oscar Wilde witty and amusing
quotations and quotes
There is only one thing in the world that is worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
I have nothing to declare except my genius.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.
I can resist everything except temptation.
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
Give me the luxuries and I can dispense with the necessities.
Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it. One can survive everything nowadays except that.
One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked, and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her convicts she doesn't deserve to have any.
I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who be in jail
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
The following Oscar Wilde quote is also to be found on our "Other" poetry insights page. This quotation is however wise rather than witty.
The pure and simple Truth is rarely pure,
and never simple.
Wit can be 'encapsulated' in quotes
The same is true of ~ Wisdom
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light.
Sir Stephen Spender
Such souls,
Whose sudden visitations daze the world,
Vanish like lightning, but they leave behind
A voice that in the distance far away
Wakens the slumbering ages.
Henry Taylor
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
John Keats
Sensations Sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.
William Wordsworth
Wisdom married to immortal verse.
William Wordsworth
Choice word and measured phrase above the reach
Of ordinary men.
William Wordsworth
Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.
William Wordsworth
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
Plato
Poetry is more philosophical and of higher value than history; for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.
Aristotle
The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective. What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
W. H. Auden