Oscar Wilde Quotes About Ethics

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

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Sad, Beautiful

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “Aphorisms”, p.64, Oscar Wilde

• The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

  Oscar Wilde

  Writing, Media, Differences

• Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Funny, Inspiring

  An Ideal Husband act 2 (1895)

• What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics.

  Oscar Wilde

  Race, Rejection, Curiosity

  Oscar Wilde (1908). “Intentions”

• I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house-tops.

  Oscar Wilde

  Integrity, Character, House

  Oscar Wilde, Isobel Murray (1999). “The Soul of Man, and Prison Writings”, p.96, Oxford University Press, USA

• Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible. Aesthetics, like sensual selection, make life lovely and wonderful, fill it with new forms, and give it progress, and variety and change.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love Life, Giving, Lovely

• I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices.

  Oscar Wilde

  Principles, Prejudice, Ethics

  Oscar Wilde (1983). “Two Society Comedies”, A&C Black

• Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mean, Interesting, Intellectual

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.190, Courier Corporation

• Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age.

  Oscar Wilde

  Age, Ethics, Morality

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (with an Essay by Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly)”, p.50, Mondial

• No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

  Oscar Wilde

  Artist, Style, Ethics

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.57, Oxford University Press on Demand

• Though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something.

  Oscar Wilde

  Integrity, Ethics, Moral

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.999, Wordsworth Editions

• Duty is what one expects from others.

  Oscar Wilde

  Responsibility, Ethics, Duty

  Oscar Wilde, Peter Raby (2008). “The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.127, Oxford Paperbacks

• I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Understanding, Spheres

  Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel (2011). “The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition”, p.22, Harvard University Press

• Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!

  Oscar Wilde

  Hate, Ethics, Abstract

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.192, Wordsworth Editions

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