Oscar Wilde Quotes About Past

• Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

  Oscar Wilde (2005). “The Prose of Oscar Wilde”, p.641, Cosimo, Inc.

• The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Dream, Future

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.568, Wordsworth Editions

• No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

  Oscar Wilde

  Break Up, Broken Heart, Heartbroken

  Oscar Wilde, Alvin Redman (1959). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.32, Courier Corporation

• Everyone may not be good, but there's always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone shortly because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

  Oscar Wilde

  Past, Judging, Judgemental

• One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.

  Oscar Wilde

  Past, Details, Remember

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (with an Essay by Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly)”, p.65, Mondial

• After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears.

  Oscar Wilde

  Past, Mourning, Ignorant

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.343, University of Chicago Press

• The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.

  Oscar Wilde

  Regret, Past, Anxiety

  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.96, Oxford University Press on Demand

• The one charm of the past is that it is the past.

  Oscar Wilde

  Past, Charm, Past Present Future

  Oscar Wilde, Moira Muldoon (2005). “The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings”, p.110, Simon and Schuster

• The gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes bring you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.

  Oscar Wilde

  Memories, War, Jealous

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “The Essential Oscar Wilde”, p.89, Simon and Schuster

• There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Husband, Real

  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.226, Oxford Paperbacks

• Do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them. The past, the present and the future are but one moment in the sight of God, in whose sight we should try to live. Time and space, succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions of thought. The imagination can transcend them.

  Oscar Wilde

  Believe, Past, Sight

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"”, p.155, Oxford University Press on Demand

• One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

  Oscar Wilde

  Time, Past, People

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.27, Wordsworth Editions

• I like men who have a future and women who have a past.

  Oscar Wilde

  Wise, Women, Future

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.136, GENERAL PRESS

• Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mistake, Character, Past

  Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Penny Dreadfuls: Tales of Horror: Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.719, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

• I prefer women with a past. They're always so damned amusing to talk to.

  Oscar Wilde

  Past, Amusing

• The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.

  Oscar Wilde

  Future, Artist, Past

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “Oscar Wilde's Wit and Wisdom: A Book of Quotations”, p.5, Courier Corporation

• Every one of course represents the spirit of his age, but there is an eternal aspect of the Spirit of every age which may be caught. To recreate the past from the mutilated fragments of the present is the task of the Historian.

  Oscar Wilde

  Past, Age, Tasks

• The one charm about the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen.

  Oscar Wilde

  Past, Charm, Curtains

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.83, GENERAL PRESS

• Any place you love is the world to you”, explained the pensive Catherine Wheel, who had been attached to an old deal box in early life, and prided herself on her broken heart; “but love is not fashionable any more, the poets have killed it. They wrote so much about that nobody believed them, and I am not surprised. True love suffers, and is silent. I remember myself once- But it is no matter now. Romance is a thing of the past.

  Oscar Wilde

  Heart, Past, Love Is

• American girls are as clever at concealing their parents as English women are at concealing their past.

  Oscar Wilde

  Girl, Clever, Past

  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.197, Oxford University Press on Demand

• Do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them.

  Oscar Wilde

  Believe, Past, People

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"”, p.155, Oxford University Press on Demand

• You are young. No hungry generations tread you down. The past does not mock you with the ruins of a beauty the secret of whose creation you have lost

  Oscar Wilde

  Past, Secret, Doe

  Oscar Wilde (2011). “Epigrams and Aphorisms”, p.126, BoD – Books on Demand

• It is absurd to say that the age of miracles is past. It has not yet begun.

  Oscar Wilde

  Future, Past, Miracle

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.107, Courier Corporation

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