Oscar Wilde Quotes About Values

• What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Funny, Leadership

  'Lady Windermere's Fan' (1892) act 3

• Without order nothing can exist-without chaos nothing can evolve. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Thoughtful, Order, People

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 4 (1891). In Wilde's play LadyWindermere's Fan, act 3 (1892), Lord Darlington replies to the question "What is a cynic?": "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

• What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market place of any single thing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Absurd, Cynic

• Some people always know the price, but not the value

  Oscar Wilde

  People, Knows, Values

• 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.

• It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

  Oscar Wilde

  Pain, Struggle, Silly

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.20, GENERAL PRESS

• The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Hypocrite, Men, Ideas

  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.15, Lulu Press, Inc

• 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.

• Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.

  Oscar Wilde

  Dream, Pain, Glasses

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (with an Essay by Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly)”, p.37, Mondial

• A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. Our lives revolve in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man's life progresses. I have just learnt this, and much else with it, from Lord Goring. And I will not spoil your life for you, nor see you spoil it as a sacrifice to me, a useless sacrifice.

  Oscar Wilde

  Ambition, Sacrifice, Men

  Oscar Wilde (2000). “Oscar Wilde - The Major Works”, p.472, OUP Oxford

• Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef.

  Oscar Wilde

  Believe, Opinion, Moral

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories”, p.141, Penguin

• In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded....He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him.

  Oscar Wilde

  Spiritual, Art, Philosophy

• The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.

  Oscar Wilde

  Intellectual, Facts, Truth Is

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.200, Wordsworth Editions

• No publisher should ever express an opinion of the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide.

  Oscar Wilde

  Matter, Opinion, Should

  Letter in 'St James's Gazette' 28 June 1890

• The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

  Oscar Wilde

  Education, Learning, Men

  Oscar Wilde, Isobel Murray (2008). “Oscar Wilde - The Major Works”, p.57, Oxford University Press

• No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.

  Oscar Wilde

  Book, Men, Criticism

• The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Ideas, Intellectual

  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.15, Lulu Press, Inc

• Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.

  Oscar Wilde

  Exercise, Class, Needs

  Quoted in Hesketh Pearson, Oscar Wilde, His Life and Wit (1946)

• As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mistake, Men, Names

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 4 (1891). A similar quotation occurs inWilde's play LadyWindermere's Fan, act 3 (1892).

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