Best Oscar Wilde quotes

“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.” 

Lady Windermere's Fan: A Play About a Good Woman

(Scarlett Johansson and Stephen Campbell Moore in A Good Woman, 2004)

“It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.” - An Ideal Husband

(Minnie Driver and Rupert Everett in An Ideal Husband, 1999)

“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.” - The Picture of Dorian Gray

(Ben Barnes in Dorian Gray, 2009)

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” 

- An Ideal Husband

(Cate Blanchett in An Ideal Husband, 1999)

“Comfort is the only thing our civilisation can give us.” - Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

(Charles Boyer and Barbara Stanwyck in Flesh and Fantasy, 1943)

“If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.” - The Importance of Being Earnest

(Rupert Everett and Reese Witherspoon in The Importance of Being Earnest, 2002)

“Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better.” - Lady Windermere's Fan: A Play About a Good Woman

(Jeanne Crain in The Fan, 1949)

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” - The Importance of Being Earnest 

 (Rupert Everett and Reese Witherspoon in The Importance of Being Earnest, 2002)

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame." - The Picture of Dorian Gray

(Shane Briant in The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1973)

“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.” 

The Critic as Artist

(Stephen Fry in Wilde, 1997)