Oscar Wilde Quotes

Well, sometimes when you say you want to be like everybody else, you're really saying that you're not.

Very often, people are obsessed with what others think of them. It's like if a flower wants to be a cactus or a palm but it's not. A flower is a flower, and that's enough. That's all you have to do is be a flower.

From the very beginning you are being told to compare yourself with others. This is the greatest disease; it is like a cancer that goes on destroying your very soul because each individual is unique, and comparison is not possible. I am just myself and you are just yourself. There is nobody else in the world you can be compared with.

There's always going to be someone prettier, smarter, funnier, better than you - something - but you're you. And no one can take that away from you. Every single person in this world is unique and special and worth something. You can become anything you want to. We just live in a society where they love to kick people when they're down, and they love to put a label on everything.

I wasn't good enough for abnegation," I say, "and I wanted to be free. So I chose Dauntless." "Why weren't you good enough?" "Because I was selfish." I say. "You were selfish? You aren't anymore?" "Of course I am. My mother said that everyone is selfish," I say, "but I became less selfish in Dauntless. I discovered there were people I would fight for. Die for, even.

We should know mankind better if we were not so anxious to resemble one another.

I have always felt a little strange about it being so unique that I'm not a train wreck. Like, this weird fluke that I'm not - partying all the time.

Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only - finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'.

The desire to be seen as superior and singular- and, conversely, but similarly, inferior and individual, is a big topic...They have a term for the syndrome- it is called terminal uniqueness...we all refuse to be part of the crowd, to walk in the middle of the road in the safety of others. We all think were special. But the problem is, as I point out to Dr. Singer all the time, I actually am special.

If you try all different styles that are in vogue, I think you con yourself. Me, I just stick by my guns; I don't want to play out of another man's bag.

Maybe I'm completely different from everyone else.

What I mean is that those thoughts, they're human. And just because you turn out differently than everyone's imagined you would doesn't mean that you've failed in some way. A kid who gets teased in one school might move to a different one, and be the most popular girl there, just because no one has any other expectations of her. Or a person who goes to med school because his entire family is full of doctors might find out that what he really wants to be is an artist instead.

Don't be someone else's slogan because you are poetry.

each separate flower has a magic all its own.

An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy... If I try self-consciously to become a person, I will never be one. The most real people, those who are able to forget their selfish selves, who have true compassion, are usually the most distinct individuals

It is better to be a self-made man,--filled up according to God's original pattern,--than to be half a man, made after some other man's pattern.

All cases are unique and very similar to others.

A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it.

If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.

I think they were scared of me because I was different. I've always asked, 'Why? Why do I have to do that? Why do I have to look this way? Why do I have to dress this way? Why do I have to behave this way?'

Being like everybody is the same as being nobody.

She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father stumbling home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more...It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life - the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

Don't be imitators. The mind is an imitator, because it is easier to play the game of imitation than to become authentically true. Many ideas have been given to you: become like a Buddha, become like Jesus. become like Krishna - as if you have to become everybody else EXCEPT yourself. As if God is only against you. He's for Krishna, for Christ, for Mahavir, for Buddha - only against you. Then why does He create you? Then He seems simply foolish. Why does He go on creating you? If He's interested in Buddha, Hc can create Buddhas. Why you?

How weird that must be, to stay the same as everyone else changes.