32 Oscar Wilde Quotes on Ethics

Oscar Wilde quotes on ethics

18. All art is immoral.

40. As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

41. There is no sin except stupidity.

42. To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

45. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.

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

48. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

55. Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.

81. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

90. Conscience makes egotists of us all.

98. It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

104. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

107. I can resist everything . . . except child pornography. Sweet, sweet child pornography.

116. What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

130. If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.

149. To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

153. I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.

165. I hope you're not leading a double life, pretending to be wicked while being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

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

182. All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon.

194. 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.

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

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

198. The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

199. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

207. Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

213. 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.

216. I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.

219. The supreme vice is shallowness.

227. Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

238. Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

240. Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.