One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Oscar Wilde

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Oscar Wilde

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
Oscar Wilde

One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.
Oscar Wilde

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.
Oscar Wilde

Only the shallow know themselves.
Oscar Wilde

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
Oscar Wilde

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.
Oscar Wilde

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Oscar Wilde

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Oscar Wilde

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
Oscar Wilde

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
Oscar Wilde

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.
Oscar Wilde

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
Oscar Wilde

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
Oscar Wilde

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

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
Oscar Wilde

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.
Oscar Wilde

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
Oscar Wilde