"A Serviceable Substitute for Wit"

When I was searching for an appropriate random quotation to include at the end of one of my latest posts, I went searching through the quotes I had saved on the Goodreads site, and laughed out loud through pages of witty sayings. A number of the most amusing quotes came from Oscar Wilde, and even though I have only read one of his works, I greatly admire his marvelous wit and lovely prose. (The play I read was "The Importance of Being Earnest". If you haven't read it, you should, because it is clever and uproariously funny.)

I simply could not resist the temptation to post some of my favorite quotes from him. Many of these quotes come from his characters, so he might not share every sentiment, but regardless, the sayings are wonderful.

On others:

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

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

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."

"Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success."

"There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing."

"Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

On self:

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."

"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."

"Only the shallow know themselves."

"Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered."

"I am not young enough to know everything."

"I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about."

"I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!"

On life and culture:

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

 "Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

"It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love."

"How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?"

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

"The public have an insatiable desire to know everything, except what is worth knowing."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

"People who count their chickens before they hatch act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately."

"I never travel without my diary. One must always have something sensational to read on the train."

"Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit."

"Music makes one feel so romantic- at least it gets on one's nerves- which is the same thing nowadays."

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

"The only good thing to do with good advice is pass it on; it is never of any use to oneself."

His alleged dying words:

"The wallpaper is dreadful, one of us will have to go."