Oscar Wilde quotes for UPSC

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

A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. [Answering the question, what is a cynic?]

Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.

The supreme vice is shallowness.

Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.

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

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.

Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do.

The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man That wastes and withers there; Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate And the Warder is Despair.

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.

There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men. And 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.

Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation.

Criticism will annihilate race-prejudices by insisting upon the unity of the human mind in the variety of its forms.

The growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing in our political life.

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

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

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime.

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.

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.

It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

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

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.

England has done one thing; it has invented and established Public Opinion, which is an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.

The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmanlike habits, supplies their demands

He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.

There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other—by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought.

Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Life is never fair, Robert. And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that is is not.

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Lord Illingworth: Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

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

When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.

For a sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.

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.