Oscar Wilde Men Quotations [Page 2]

The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid

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.

Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods – they worship us and keep bothering us to do something.

Miss Prism: ... And you do not seem to reealize, dear Doctor, that by persistently remaining single, a man coverts himself into a permanent public temptation. ... Chausuble: But is a man not equally attractive when married? Miss Prism: No married man is ever attractive except to his wife. Chausuble: And often, I´ve been told, not even to her.

I don't know how to talk. Oh! talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.

LADY STUTFIELD I adore silent men. MRS ALLONBY Oh, Ernest isn't silent. He talks the whole time. But he has got no conversation. What he talks about I don't know. I haven't listened to him for years.

Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.

That beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is to say unless we are content to be less than men.

Just as the philanthropist is the nuisance of the ethical sphere, so the nuisance of the intellectual sphere is the man who is so occupied in trying to educate others, that he has never had any time to educate himself.

I am afraid that you have been listening to the conversation of someone older than yourself. That is always a dangerous thing to do, and if you allow it to degenerate into a habit, you will find it absolutely fatal to any intellectual development.

By the artificial separation of soul and body men have invented a Realism that is vulgar and an Idealism that is void.

There is no such thing as romance in our day, women have become too brilliant; nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman.

The evil that machinery is doing is not merely in the consequence of its work but in the fact that it makes men themselves machines also.

While to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.

A man who marries his mistress leaves a vacancy in that position.

The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.

As one reads history ... one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.

The evolution of man is slow. The injustice of men is great.

Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.

Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.

By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.

Life is a great disappointment.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one's neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him.

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.

The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.

No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.

Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly

A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.

The fatal errors of life are not due to man's being unreasonable: an unreasonable moment may be one's finest moment. They are due to man's being logical.

A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. Our lives revolve in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man's life progresses. I have just learnt this, and much else with it, from Lord Goring. And I will not spoil your life for you, nor see you spoil it as a sacrifice to me, a useless sacrifice.

The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love - that's the reason one should never marry.

Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.

The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married.

Jack? . . . No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations . . . I have known several Jacks, and they all, without exception, were more than usually plain. Besides, Jack is a notorious domesticity for John! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment’s solitude. The only really safe name is Ernest.

Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.

It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Well, I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.

but the bravest man among us is afraid of himself

Oh! I don't think I would like to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about.

It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.

Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?

Every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim.

Life under a good government is rarely dramatic; life under a bad government is always so.

On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband's dinners.

The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.

Who is that man over there? I don't know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him! -- hang him!

Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.

Do you smoke? Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. I'm glad to hear of it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind.

A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.

With subtle and finely-wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and the sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.

Civilization is not by means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.

My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly,madly! You didn't know it then-you know it now.

Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.

If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.

If God really wanted to punish, he'd answer all our prayers.

Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne.

Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them.

Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working.

Shakespeare might have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the white streets of London, or seen the serving-men of rival houses bite their thumbs at each other in the open square; but Hamlet came out of his soul, and Romeo out of his passion.

The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not its growth and development.

If a woman wants to hold a man she has merely to appeal to what is worst in him.

Aestheticism is a search after the signs of the beautiful. It is the science of the beautiful through which men seek the correlation of the arts. It is, to speak more exactly, the search after the secret of life.

A method of procuring sensations? Do you think then, that a man who has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again? Don't tell me that." says Dorian. "Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," says Lord Henry

Good heavens, I suppose a man may eat his own muffins in his own garden." "But you have just said it was perfectly heartless to eat muffins!" "I said it was perfectly heartless of YOU under the circumstances. That is a very different thing." "That may be, but the muffins are the same!

There was purification in punishment. Not 'Forgive us our sins,' but 'Smite us for our iniquities' should be the prayer of a man to a most just God.

Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.

Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.

We women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes...

I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.

Oscar Wilde was suing the Marquis of Queensbury in 1895 for libel accusing Wilde of homosexuality Counsel: Have you ever adored a young man madly? Wilde: I have never given adoration to anyone except myself.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.

Just because a man has died for it, does not make it true.

Men know life too early. Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty!

And alien tears will fill for him pity's long broken urn. For his mourners will all be outcast men, and outcasts always mourn.

Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.

It would leave no room for developments and I intend to develop in many directions.

Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is usually Judas who writes the biography.

An alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man That wastes and withers there.

The truth about the life of a man is not what he does, but the legend which he creates around himself.

The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.

What is said of man is nothing; the point is, who says it.

What do you call a bad man? The sort of man who admires innocence.

Two men look out a window. One sees mud, the other sees the stars.

I am a man of simple pleasures. The best suits me perfectly.

Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief.

Women's styles may change but their designs remain the same.

Judges, like the criminal classes, have their lighter moments

Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.

In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

In England it is enough for a man to try and produce any serious, beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen.

As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.