Oscar Wilde's Paradoxical Thinking

● It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

● A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain.

● Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

● Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.

● In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst.

● Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

● Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

● There is no sin except stupidity.

● The nineteenth century is a turning point in history, simply on account of the work of two men, Darwin and Renan, the one the critic of the Book of Nature, the other the critic of the books of God. Not to recognise this is to miss the meaning of one of the most important eras in the progress of the world.

● Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.