Oscar Wilde Quotes About Sin

• 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

• 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.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mourning, Tragedy, Sin

  1891 Intentions, 'The Critic as Artist'.

• How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?

  Oscar Wilde

  Sad, Broken Heart, Heartbreak

  The Ballad of Reading Gaol pt. 5, st. 14 (1898)

• You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.

  Oscar Wilde

  Sin, Dorian Grey, Portrait Of Dorian Gray

  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.55, Oxford University Press on Demand

• 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

• A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.

  Oscar Wilde

  Honesty, Men, Dust

  Oscar Wilde (2011). “De Profundis”, p.81, Courier Corporation

• There is no sin except stupidity.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Stupid, Silly

  'The Critic as Artist' pt. 2 in 'Intentions' (1891)

• The only sin is stupidity.

  Oscar Wilde

  Stupidity, Sin

• There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.

  Oscar Wilde

  Memories, Madness, Horror

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.201, Diversion Books

• Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Laughing, Humanity

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Short Stories”, p.53, Cosimo, Inc.

• 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”

• Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.

  Oscar Wilde

  Morning, Eye, Night

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.360, GENERAL PRESS

• Sins of the flesh are nothing. They are maladies for physicians to cure, if they should be cured. Sins of the soul alone are shameful.

  Oscar Wilde

  Soul, Physicians, Flesh

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.171, Wordsworth Editions

• Charity creates a multitude of sins.

  Oscar Wilde

  Charity, Sin, Multitudes

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Soul of Man under Socialism”, p.4, Oscar Wilde

• Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.

  Oscar Wilde

  Dog, Strong, Feet

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.152, 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.

• Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

  Oscar Wilde

  Vanity, Sin, Vain

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

• The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.

  Oscar Wilde

  Kissing, Hands, Sick

  Oscar Wilde (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.150, OUP Oxford

• Each little thing that we do passes into the great machine of life which may grind our virtues to powder and make them worthless, or transform our sins into elements of a new civilization, more marvelous and more splendid than any that has gone before.

  Oscar Wilde

  Civilization, Progress, Littles

  Oscar Wilde, Isobel Murray (2008). “Oscar Wilde - The Major Works”, p.257, Oxford University Press

• The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.

  Oscar Wilde

  Regret, Luxury, Done

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.23, Diversion Books

• Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.

  Oscar Wilde

  Writing, Men, Faces

  Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel (2011). “The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition”, p.214, Harvard University Press

• He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Passion, Mad

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.80, Xist Publishing

• The sin was mine; I did not understand. So now is music prisoned in her cave, Save where some ebbing desultory wave Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand.

  Oscar Wilde

  Forgiveness, Caves, Sin

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, p.126, Oscar Wilde

• There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.

  Oscar Wilde

  Real, Passion, Thinking

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “The Essential Oscar Wilde”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

• There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm.

  Oscar Wilde

  Taken, Moving, Passion

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Story of a Fashionable Young Man Who Sells His Soul for Eternal Youth and Beauty (Beloved Books Edition)”, p.212, Lulu Press, Inc

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