Books Quotes by Oscar Wilde

Books are never finished, They are merely abandoned.

— Oscar Wilde

“Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.”

— Oscar Wilde

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.

— Oscar Wilde

I treated Art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction.

— Oscar Wilde

I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five

— Oscar Wilde

I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so.

— Oscar Wilde

“Nowadays, people read too many books to appreciate any.”

— Oscar Wilde

George Moore leads his readers to the latrine and locks them in.

— Oscar Wilde

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

— Oscar Wilde

“Thereis no such thing as amoral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

— Oscar Wilde

Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.

— Oscar Wilde

In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public…

— Oscar Wilde

Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it,…

— Oscar Wilde

The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

“The public is largely influenced by the look of a book. So are we all. It is the only artistic thing about…

— Oscar Wilde

“The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend upon it for their daily bread, and the…

— Oscar Wilde

“I believe I am to have enough to live on for about eighteen months at any rate, so that if I may…

— Oscar Wilde

The worst of it is that I am perpetually being punished for nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he punishes by…

— Oscar Wilde

“The hero, the wonderful young Parisian in whom the romantic and the scientific temperaments were so strangely blended, became to him a…

— Oscar Wilde

“The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show…

— Oscar Wilde

“Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls…

— Oscar Wilde

“Read the whole book, suffer it to tell even one of its secrets to your soul, and your soul will grow eager…

— Oscar Wilde

“With slouch and swing around the ring We trod the Fools’ Parade! We did not care: we knew we were The Devils’…

— Oscar Wilde

“I foresee,’ said Goethe, ‘the dawn of a new literature which all people may claim as their own, for all have contributed…

— Oscar Wilde

Miss Prism: Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days. Cecily: Did you really,…

— Oscar Wilde

“If they know nothing of death, it is because they know little of life, for the secrets of life and death belong…

— Oscar Wilde

What a silly thing love is!' said the student as he walked away. 'It is not half as useful as logic, for…

— Oscar Wilde

“Nor is it again that the novel has killed the play, as some critics would persuade us - the romantic movement of…

— Oscar Wilde

“Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one’s own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them,…

— Oscar Wilde

With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?

— Oscar Wilde

“Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book.”

— Oscar Wilde

A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written.

— Oscar Wilde

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.

— Oscar Wilde

In every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust.

— Oscar Wilde

I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much

— Oscar Wilde

“In literature mere egotism is delightful.”

— Oscar Wilde

“With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?”

— Oscar Wilde

Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

— Oscar Wilde

The only link between Literature and the Drama left to us in England at the present moment is the bill of the…

— Oscar Wilde