Oscar Wilde quotes

1854–1900 · Westland Row, Dublin, Ireland

• 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.

• I can resist everything except temptation.

• No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

• There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

• The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all.

• The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

• There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

• It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces a false impression.

• I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

• The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!