Oscar Wilde

About the author

Oscar Wilde, Celebrated Aestheticism Proponent

Born on 16 October 1854, Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright who became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is best known for his epigrammatic wit and flamboyant style that defined his plays and novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Dying at an early age of 46, on 30 November 1900, Wilde left behind a significant body of work that has had a profound influence on 20th and 21st-century literature. His satirical approach to societal norms and the aestheticism movement have also made significant contributions to individualist anarchism, emphasising the importance of the individual and their freedoms. Despite a life marked by controversy and early death, Wilde's ideas continue to resonate in discussions about art, morality, and individualism in today's anarchistic discourse.

Date of Birth: 16 October 1854

Date of Death: 30 November 1900

Country of Birth: Ireland

Political Ideas: Aestheticism, Individualism

Quotes Available: 45

Quotes by Oscar Wilde

High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist.

The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

To be really medieval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.

Wherever there is a man who exercizes authority, there is a man who resists authority.

Only the shallow know themselves.

One should always be a little improbable.

Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

The one thing that the public dislike is novelty.

It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property.

I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.

As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.

It is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologize to one in private for what they have written against one in public.

Private property has crushed true individualism, and set up an individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road and encumbering them.

Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

All the results of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable.

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.

The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.

Alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

"Know thyself" was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, "Be thyself" shall be written.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.

Man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is.

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercize it, and degrades those over whom it is exercized.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value.

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.

Patriotism is the vice of nations.

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy.

The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.

In America, the president reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever.

Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercize 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.