Quotes from Oscar Wilde

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

What of Art? -It is a malady. --Love? -An Illusion. --Religion? -The fashionable substitute for Belief. --You are a sceptic. -Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith. --What are you? -To define is to limit.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Every woman is a rebel.

Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.

I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.