Oscar Wilde Quotes About Virtue

• Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Sarcastic, Patriotic

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.144, Wordsworth Editions

• Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

  Oscar Wilde

  Eye, Men, History

  "The Soul of Man Under Socialism". Essay by Oscar Wilde, 1891.

• Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Drinking, Beer

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “Oscar Wilde's Wit and Wisdom: A Book of Quotations”, p.26, Courier Corporation

• 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

• It is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees.

  Oscar Wilde

  Food, Wine, Men

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.823, GENERAL PRESS

• 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)

• 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

• Disobedience is man's original virtue.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Virtue, Originals

• We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.

  Oscar Wilde

  Thinking, Quality, May

  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.52, Oxford University Press on Demand

• As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.

  Oscar Wilde

  Poverty, Pity, Virtue

  'The Soul of Man under Socialism'

• To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.

  Oscar Wilde

  Fear, Exercise, Power

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