Oscar Wilde Quotes about Lying

To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love.

To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love.

Lying, Love You, Heart

To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

Oscar Wilde

Regret, Lying, Soul

Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"”, p.100, Oxford University Press on Demand

History is a lie commonly agreed upon.

Oscar Wilde

Lying

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. It seeks to show new perspectives and other choices. It is a way to help expand and liberate the consciousness; our experiences, understandings, imaginings, options and thereby our lives.

Oscar Wilde

Art, Lying, Men

"The Soul of Man under Socialism". Book by Oscar Wilde, 1891.

The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.

Oscar Wilde

Inspirational, Lying, Men

"The Soul of Man Under Socialism" (1891)

Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.

Oscar Wilde

Beautiful, Art, Lying

Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.60, Courier Corporation

I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.

Oscar Wilde

Lying, Dishonesty, Speak

Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"”, p.141, Oxford University Press on Demand

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.

Oscar Wilde

Lying, Literature, Imaginative

Behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul.

Oscar Wilde

Lying, Passion, Men

Oscar Wilde (2014). “A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies”, p.135, Simon and Schuster

The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of Society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members.

Oscar Wilde

Lying, Healthy, Absence

Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.693, GENERAL PRESS

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

Oscar Wilde

Truth, Lying, Simple

Oscar Wilde (2000). “The Plays of Oscar Wilde”, p.368, Wordsworth Editions

The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things.

Oscar Wilde

Lying, Perspective, Healthy

Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.222, University of Chicago Press

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.

Oscar Wilde

Liars, Lying, Stories

Oscar Wilde (2014). “A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies”, p.60, Simon and Schuster

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

Oscar Wilde

Art, Lying, Duty

Oscar Wilde (2015). “Oscar Wilde The Dover Reader”, p.447, Courier Dover Publications

The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.

Oscar Wilde

Country, Lying, Hero

Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.304, University of Chicago Press

The real weakness of England lies, not in incomplete armaments or unfortified coasts, not in the poverty that creeps through sunless lanes, or the drunkenness that brawls in loathsome courts, but simply in the fact that her ideals are emotional and not intellectual.

Oscar Wilde

Real, Lying, Emotional

Oscar Wilde (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)”, p.1489, Delphi Classics

Yet, even for us, there is left some loveliness of environment, and the dullness of tutors and professors matters very little when one can loiter in the grey cloisters at Magdalen, and listen to some flute-like voice singing in Waynfleete's chapel, or lie in the green meadow, among the strange snakespotted fritillaries, and watch the sunburnt noon smite to a finer gold the tower's gilded vanes, or wander up the Christ Church staircase beneath the vaulted ceiling's shadowy fans, or pass through the sculptured gateway of Laud's building in the College of St. John.

Oscar Wilde

Lying, College, Oxford

Oscar Wilde (1999). “De Profundis: The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Writings”, p.231, Wordsworth Editions

As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection.

Oscar Wilde

Music, Lying, Liars

Oscar Wilde, Isobel Murray (2008). “Oscar Wilde - The Major Works”, p.218, Oxford University Press

The only form of lying that is absolutely beyond reproach is lying for its own sake.

Oscar Wilde

Lying, Sake, Form

Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.942, Wordsworth Editions

Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you.

Oscar Wilde

Lying, Perfection, Affection

Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.1039, GENERAL PRESS

People seldom tell the truths that are worth telling. We ought to choose our truths as carefully as we choose our lies and to select our virtues with as much thought as we bestow upon the selection of our enemies.

Oscar Wilde

Lying, People, Enemy

Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.197, Wordsworth Editions

Imagination is imitative-the real innovation lies in criticism.

Oscar Wilde

Real, Lying, Imagination

Punctuality is the thief of time

Oscar Wilde

Time, Work, Lying

Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.222, Wordsworth Editions

When he takes the knife to the canvass the servants find him lying dead with a knife through is heart and "withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage." and the portrait "in all the wonders of his exquisite youth and beauty." p 349

Oscar Wilde

Lying, Heart, Knives

Requiescat Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow. All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust. Lily-like, white as snow, She hardly knew She was a woman, so Sweetly she grew. Coffin-board, heavy stone, Lie on her breast, I vex my heart alone She is at rest. Peace, Peace, she cannot hear Lyre or sonnet, All my life’s buried here, Heap earth upon it.

Oscar Wilde

Lying, Heart, White

Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Poems and poems in prose”, p.5, Oxford University Press on Demand