Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast (Penguin Little Black Classics, #119)

by Oscar Wilde

Good kings are the only dangerous enemies that modern democracy has.

I have always been of the opinion that consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative …

The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history.

Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

I have always been of opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.

Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.

Prayer=coraspondance

Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others.

… imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult.

Respect?

The more abstract, the more ideal an art is, the more it reveals to us the temper of its age. If we wish to understand a nation by means of its art, let us look at its architecture or its music.

There is a great deal to be said in favour of reading a novel backwards. The last page is as a rule the most interesting, and when one begins with the catastrophe or the dénouement one feels on pleasant terms of equality with the author. It is like going behind the scenes of a theatre. One is no longer taken in, and the hair-breadth escapes of the hero and the wild agonies of the heroine leave one absolutely unmoved. One knows the jealously guarded secret, and one can afford to smile at the quite unnecessary anxiety that the puppets of fiction always consider it their duty to display.

Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

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This is the reason why music is the perfect type of art.

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For what is Truth? In matters of religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one’s last mood.

Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean.

The fact is that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

In centuries before ours the public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump. That was quite hideous. In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the keyhole. That is much worse.

Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature – it requires, in fact, that nature of a true Individualis...

Work is the curse of the drinking classes o...

The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy.

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The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.

Discussion

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.

The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

Only the shallow know themselves.

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

am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.

It is really only the idle classes who dress badly. Wherever physical labour of any kind is required, the costume used is, as a rule, absolutely right, for labour necessitates freedom, and without freedom there is no such thing as beauty in dress at all.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover, when it is too late, that the only thing one never regrets are one’s mistakes.

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

Recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation.

To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.

I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices.

Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.

Formal courtesies will strain a close friendship.

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

One can live for years sometimes without living at all, and then all life comes crowding into one single hour.

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

To live in happiness, you must know some unhappiness in life.

If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture.

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