“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“But she is happiest alone. She is happiest alone.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“To get into the best society, nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people - that is all!”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“LORD ILLINGWORTH: The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.
MRS ALLONBY: And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“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.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“LORD ILLINGWORTH What do you think she'd do if I kissed her?
MRS ALLONBY Either marry you, or strike you across the face with her glove. What would you do if she struck you across the face with her glove?
LORD ILLINGWORTH Fall in love with her, probably.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“I was wrong. God's law is only Love.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“It was you I thought of all the time, I gave to them the love you did not need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“MRS ALLONBY Is she such a mystery?
LORD ILLINGWORTH She is more than a mystery - she is a mood.
MRS ALLONBY Moods don't last.
LORD ILLINGWORTH It is their chief charm.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“Only love can keep anyone alive...”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“MRS ALLONBY I adore them. The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.
HESTER I think the stupid people talk a great deal.
MRS ALLONBY Ah, I never listen!”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“Lord Illingworth told me this morning that there was an orchid there as beautiful as the seven deadly sins.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“But don't you think one can be happy when on is married?
Perfectly happy. But the happiness of a married man, my dear Gerald, depends on the people he has not married.
But if one is in love?
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“You know I have loved him always.
But we are very poor.
Who, being loved, is poor? Oh, no one. I hate my riches. They are a burden...”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“My dear young lady, there was a great deal of truth; I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“No woman should have a memory. Memory in a woman is the beginning of dowdiness. One can always tell from a woman's bonnet whether she has got a memory or not.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“MRS. ALLONBY. It is only fair to tell you beforehand he has got no conversation at all.
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.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“To win back my youth, there is nothing I wouldn't do - except take exercise, get up early, or be a useful member of the community.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“Duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“The one advantage of playing with fire, Lady Caroline, is that one never gets even singed. It is the people who don't know how to play with it who get burned up.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“MRS ALLONBY Have you tried a good reputation?
LORD ILLINGWORTH It is one of the many annoyances to which I have never been subjected.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“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 others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“LORD ILLINGWORTH. As George Harford I had everything I wanted. Now I have merely everything that other people want, which isn't nearly so pleasant.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
“Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from A Woman of No Importance
Oscar Wilde
Born place: in Dublin, Ireland
Born date October 16, 1854
See more on GoodReads
“Don't waste your courage on hating him. Keep yourself to yourself. And keep up your courage.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Favored Child
“The first time I saw your father, I’d just come home from the hunt. The forests of Calydon are thick with game, but the deer are so clever that it was the first time I’d managed to bring one down. I was so proud of what I’d done that I insisted on carrying the buck into the throne room myself and dropped it at my father’s feet before I noticed we had a guest.” She smiled at the memory.
“I’ll bet Father thought you were Artemis herself,” I said.
That made my mother laugh. “Not Artemis. You know how he feels about her. But he did say he mistook me for one of her huntress nymphs. That was just before he told me he had to marry me or die.”
I made a face. “Father said that?”
“Men say many things when they want to win a woman. Whether or not they mean what they say…” She shrugged. “Your father meant it. Poor soul, it seemed like he would die, because none of my father’s advisers thought I should marry him. Tyndareus came to Calydon as a landless exile; his brother had stolen his kingdom.”
The story of Father’s early trouble and final triumph was so well known that the palace stones could tell it. “Did you come to Sparta to marry him after he won back his crown?” I asked. “Or did he have to go back to Calydon for you?”
“Are you asking because you want to know, or because you want to distract me from what we need to talk about?”
― Esther M. Friesner, quote from Nobody's Princess
“Independence & self-reliance had no cultural purchase; indeed, they could scarcely be conceived, let alone prized...The best course was humbly to accept the identity to which destiny assigned you: the ploughman needed only to know how to plough, the weaver to weave, the monk to pray.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
“Never been so intensely watched by a creature who would kill me if it got the chance. I stared at it, and I felt death staring back. A”
― Michelle Paver, quote from Dark Matter
“The sexual mechanisms of the two genders are just not compatible, that’s the horrible truth of it. (...)
This is a truth we dare not acknowledge these days - because sameness is our religion and heretics are no more welcome now than they ever were - but I’m going to acknowledge it, because I’ve always felt that humility before the facts is the only thing that keeps a rational man together. Be humble in the face of facts, and proud in the face of opinions, as George Bernard Shaw once said.
He didn’t, actually. I just wanted to put some authority behind this observation of mine, because I know you’re not going to like it.”
― Hugh Laurie, quote from The Gun Seller
Ilium
What's Left of Me
One Shot
Captain Blood
The Never War
90 Minutes in Heaven...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
