29 Oscar Wilde Quotes on Society

Oscar Wilde quotes on society

14. And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

37. 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.

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.

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

61. The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

72. Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.

78. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.

95. When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.

100. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.

118. I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.

136. The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.

142. I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy.

145. Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?

154. In married life, three is company, and two is none.

156. It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

158. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

164. The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not?

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.

170. Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can't get into it do that.

172. Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

183. Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.

184. The only possible society is oneself.

202. Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

204. In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.

212. I know not whether Laws be right, Or whether Laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol Is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long.

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.

229. Bigamy is having a wife too many, monogamy is the same.

239. One of the requisites of sanity is to disagree with the majority of the British public.

251. Why was I born with such contemporaries?