奥斯卡.王尔德的幽默名言集锦(中英)
王尔德(oscar wilde,1854-1900)不仅是诗人、小说家,剧作家、批评家,而且是有史以来敢于承认自己是天才的天才之一。他在进纽约海关时对海关官员说: “除了天才之外,我没有什么可申报的。”(“i have nothing to declare except my genius.”)
a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
愤世嫉俗者是一个知道所有东西的价格、却不知道它们的价值的人。
***
a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
梦想家只能在月光下找到自己的路,他的惩罚是第一个看见黎明。
***
a little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
不够真诚是危险的,太真诚则绝对是致命的。
***
a man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
一个人在选择他的敌人时,再小心也不为过。
***
a poet can survive everything but a misprint.
一个诗人什么都可以容忍,印刷错误除外。
***
all women become like their mothers. that is their tragedy. no man does. that's his.
所有女人都会变得像她们的母亲一样,这是女人的悲剧。但没有男人变得像他们的父亲,这是男人的悲剧。
***
always forgive your enemies. nothing annoys them so much.
永远要宽恕你的敌人。没有什么比这更能让他们心烦的了。
***
america is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
美国是唯一一个直接从野蛮进入颓废、中间没有经过文明阶段的社会。
***
arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
要避免争论,争论总是俗不可耐,而且常常令人信服。
***
as long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
只要一个女人看上去比她自己的女儿小十岁,她就一定会心满意足。
***
bad artists always admire each other's work.
糟糕的画家总是欣赏彼此的作品。
***
between men and women there is no friendship possible. there is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
男女之间不可能存在友谊,有的只是爱恨情仇。
***
conscience and cowardice are really the same things.
良心和怯懦其实是一回事。
***
dammit sir, it's your duty to get married. you can't be always living for pleasure.
该死,先生,结婚是你的职责,你不能总是逍遥快活。
***
democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
民主就是指人民用人民的大头棒打击人民。
***
don't give a woman advice; one should never give a woman anything she can't wear in the evening.
不要给女人忠告;决不要给女人任何她晚上不能穿戴的东西。
***
education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
教育是一件可敬的事,但要时刻牢记,没有什么值得知道的事是教得会的。
***
experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.
经验是一个人给自己所犯的错误取的名字。
***
fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
时装丑陋得完全令人无法容忍,以至于我们必须每6个月就改变它的样式。
***
how can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
女人如何能期望会从男人那里获得幸福,如果他坚持把她当作一个完全正常的人。
***
i adore political parties. they are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.
我喜欢政治晚会,这是唯一人们不谈政治的地方。
***
i am not young enough to know everything.
我还没有年轻到什么都懂的地步。
***
i am so clever that sometimes i don’t understand a single word of what i’m saying.
我简直太聪明了,有时连我自己都不知道自己在说什么。
***
i can resist everything except temptation.
我可以抗拒一切,诱惑除外。
***
i have made an important discovery…that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effects of intoxication.
我有一个重大发现——如果摄入足量酒精,就会产生各种陶醉的效果。
***
i like talking to a brick wall, it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me.
我喜欢对一堵墙说话,世界上只有它不会反驳我。
***
i love acting. it is so much more real than life.
我喜欢演戏。与人生相比,演戏更真实。
***
i often take exercise. why only yesterday i had breakfast in bed.
我经常锻炼。只是昨天我是在床上吃的早饭。
***
i think that god, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
我想,上帝在创造人类时高估了他的能力。
***
i was working on the proof of one of my poems all morning, and took out a comma. in the afternoon i put it back again.
我整个早上都在校对自己的一首诗,我去掉了一个逗号。下午我又把它加了上去。
***
ignorance is like a delicate flower: touch it and the bloom is gone.
无知就像是一朵精致的花朵:摸一下,它就消失了。
***
in this world there are only two tragedies. one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
世界上只有两种悲剧,一种是一个人没有得到他想要的,另一种是他得到了。
***
it is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
这是一件很悲哀的事——如今几乎没有无用的信息。
***
it is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.
美丽要比善良好,善良要比难看强。
***
it is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.
所有人类的重大问题都有一个共同点:没有点幽默和疯狂是没办法解决的。
***
it is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
争论者损失的只是智力。
***
it is very easy to endure the difficulties of one's enemies. it is the successes of one's friends that are hard to bear.
来自敌人的困难可以忍,来自朋友的成功则无可忍。
***
life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
人生就是一件蠢事追着另一件蠢事而来,而爱情则是两个蠢东西追来追去。
***
like dear st francis of assisi i am wedded to poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success.
就像亲爱的圣芳济一样,我也和贫穷联姻,但我的婚姻并不成功。
***
marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
结婚是想象战胜了理智,再婚是希望战胜了经验。
***
music makes one feel so romantic—at least it always gets on one's nerves, which is the same thing nowadays.
音乐让人感觉非常浪漫,至少让人感觉不安,如今两者是一回事。
***
no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. it looks so calculating.
没有女人应该对她的年龄十分准确。这显得有些精于算计。
***
one should never trust a woman who tells her real age. if she tells that, she'll tell anything.
一个人决不应该相信说出自己真实年龄的女人。如果她把这都说出来了,那她什么都会说。
***
please do not shoot the pianist. he is doing his best.
请别开枪打死那个钢琴师,他已经尽力了。
***
science is the record of dead religions.
科学是死去的宗教的记录。
***
tell the cook of this restaurant with my compliments that these are the very worst sandwiches in the whole world, and that when i ask for a watercress sandwich i do not mean a loaf with a field in the middle of it.
请转告我对这家饭店厨师的赞誉,这是全世界最糟糕的三明治了,还有,我点的是豆瓣菜三明治,我并不是要面包片中夹一块菜田。
***
the basis of optimism is sheer terror.
乐观的基础完全是恐惧。
***
the book of life begins with a man and a woman in a garden…it ends with revelations.
《生命之书》始于一座花园里的一男一女……它最后以《启示录》告终。
***
the difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
报纸和文学的区别是,报纸没法读,而文学则没人读。
***
the only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future.
圣人和罪人的唯一区别是,每一个圣人都有过去,而每一个罪人都有未来。
***
the only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. it is never of any use to oneself.
对于忠告,你所能做的,就是把它奉送给别人,忠告从来就不是给自己准备的。
***
the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
摆脱诱惑的唯一方法是屈服于它。
***
the play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
演出相当成功,但观众则是一场灾难。
***
the public is wonderfully tolerant. it forgives everything except genius.
公众极其宽容,他们可以宽容一切,天才除外。
***
there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
世界上只有一件比被人谈论更糟糕的事,那就是没人谈论你。
***
thirty five is a very attractive age; london society is full of women who have of their own free choice remained thirty-five for years.
三十五岁是一个非常有吸引力的年龄;伦敦社交圈内满是这样好多年一直保持三十五岁的女人,她们可以自由地挑来选去。
***
this suspense is terrible. i hope it will last.
悬念是可怕的。我希望它一直延续下去。
***
time is a waste of money.
时间是一种对金钱的浪费。
***
to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
失去一个父母可以看成是一种不幸;失去双亲看上去就像是一种粗心了。
***
to love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
爱自己就是开始一场延续一生的罗曼史。
***
true friends stab you in the front.
当面扎刀的是真朋友。
***
when good americans die they go to paris. when bad americans die they go to america.
当美国的好人死了,他们就去巴黎。当美国的坏蛋死了,他们就去美国。
***
all bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
所有糟糕的诗歌都源于真情实感。
***
when i was young i used to think that money was the most important thing in life. now that i am old, i know it is.
当我年轻时,我以为金钱是人生中最重要的东西。现在我老了,我知道这是真的。
***
when the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
当天神想要惩罚我们,他们就答应我们的祈祷。
***
whenever people agree with me i always feel i must be wrong.
每当人们赞同我时,我总希望自己一定是错了。
***
women are never disarmed by compliments. men always are. that is the difference between the sexes.
恭维话从来没有让女人缴械,但可以让男人缴械。这就是性别差异。
***
women have a much better time than men in this world. there are far more things forbidden to them.
女人在世上的日子要比男人好过得多。她们有太多禁忌。
***
women love men for their defects; if men have enough of them women will forgive them everything, even their gigantic intellects.
女人因为男人的缺点而爱男人;如果男人的缺点足够多,女人什么事都可以原谅他们,哪怕是他们的智力。
***
women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
女人代表着物质战胜了理智,正如男人代表着理智战胜了道德。
***
young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.
年轻人想要有信仰,但他们却没有;老年人不想要有信仰,但却办不到。
王尔德(oscar wilde,1854-1900)不仅是诗人、小说家,剧作家、批评家,而且是有史以来敢于承认自己是天才的天才之一。他在进纽约海关时对海关官员说: “除了天才之外,我没有什么可申报的。”(“i have nothing to declare except my genius.”)
愤世嫉俗者是一个知道所有东西的价格、却不知道它们的价值的人。
梦想家只能在月光下找到自己的路,他的惩罚是第一个看见黎明。
不够真诚是危险的,太真诚则绝对是致命的。
一个人在选择他的敌人时,再小心也不为过。
一个诗人什么都可以容忍,印刷错误除外。
所有女人都会变得像她们的母亲一样,这是女人的悲剧。但没有男人变得像他们的父亲,这是男人的悲剧。
永远要宽恕你的敌人。没有什么比这更能让他们心烦的了。
美国是唯一一个直接从野蛮进入颓废、中间没有经过文明阶段的社会。
要避免争论,争论总是俗不可耐,而且常常令人信服。
只要一个女人看上去比她自己的女儿小十岁,她就一定会心满意足。
糟糕的画家总是欣赏彼此的作品。
男女之间不可能存在友谊,有的只是爱恨情仇。
良心和怯懦其实是一回事。
该死,先生,结婚是你的职责,你不能总是逍遥快活。
民主就是指人民用人民的大头棒打击人民。
不要给女人忠告;决不要给女人任何她晚上不能穿戴的东西。
教育是一件可敬的事,但要时刻牢记,没有什么值得知道的事是教得会的。
经验是一个人给自己所犯的错误取的名字。
时装丑陋得完全令人无法容忍,以至于我们必须每6个月就改变它的样式。
女人如何能期望会从男人那里获得幸福,如果他坚持把她当作一个完全正常的人。
我喜欢政治晚会,这是唯一人们不谈政治的地方。
我还没有年轻到什么都懂的地步。
我简直太聪明了,有时连我自己都不知道自己在说什么。
我可以抗拒一切,诱惑除外。
我有一个重大发现——如果摄入足量酒精,就会产生各种陶醉的效果。
我喜欢对一堵墙说话,世界上只有它不会反驳我。
我喜欢演戏。与人生相比,演戏更真实。
我经常锻炼。只是昨天我是在床上吃的早饭。
我想,上帝在创造人类时高估了他的能力。
我整个早上都在校对自己的一首诗,我去掉了一个逗号。下午我又把它加了上去。
无知就像是一朵精致的花朵:摸一下,它就消失了。
世界上只有两种悲剧,一种是一个人没有得到他想要的,另一种是他得到了。
这是一件很悲哀的事——如今几乎没有无用的信息。
美丽要比善良好,善良要比难看强。
所有人类的重大问题都有一个共同点:没有点幽默和疯狂是没办法解决的。
争论者损失的只是智力。
来自敌人的困难可以忍,来自朋友的成功则无可忍。
人生就是一件蠢事追着另一件蠢事而来,而爱情则是两个蠢东西追来追去。
就像亲爱的圣芳济一样,我也和贫穷联姻,但我的婚姻并不成功。
结婚是想象战胜了理智,再婚是希望战胜了经验。
音乐让人感觉非常浪漫,至少让人感觉不安,如今两者是一回事。
没有女人应该对她的年龄十分准确。这显得有些精于算计。
一个人决不应该相信说出自己真实年龄的女人。如果她把这都说出来了,那她什么都会说。
请别开枪打死那个钢琴师,他已经尽力了。
科学是死去的宗教的记录。
请转告我对这家饭店厨师的赞誉,这是全世界最糟糕的三明治了,还有,我点的是豆瓣菜三明治,我并不是要面包片中夹一块菜田。
乐观的基础完全是恐惧。
《生命之书》始于一座花园里的一男一女……它最后以《启示录》告终。
报纸和文学的区别是,报纸没法读,而文学则没人读。
圣人和罪人的唯一区别是,每一个圣人都有过去,而每一个罪人都有未来。
对于忠告,你所能做的,就是把它奉送给别人,忠告从来就不是给自己准备的。
摆脱诱惑的唯一方法是屈服于它。
演出相当成功,但观众则是一场灾难。
公众极其宽容,他们可以宽容一切,天才除外。
世界上只有一件比被人谈论更糟糕的事,那就是没人谈论你。
三十五岁是一个非常有吸引力的年龄;伦敦社交圈内满是这样好多年一直保持三十五岁的女人,她们可以自由地挑来选去。
悬念是可怕的。我希望它一直延续下去。
时间是一种对金钱的浪费。
失去一个父母可以看成是一种不幸;失去双亲看上去就像是一种粗心了。
爱自己就是开始一场延续一生的罗曼史。
当面扎刀的是真朋友。
当美国的好人死了,他们就去巴黎。当美国的坏蛋死了,他们就去美国。
所有糟糕的诗歌都源于真情实感。
当我年轻时,我以为金钱是人生中最重要的东西。现在我老了,我知道这是真的。
当天神想要惩罚我们,他们就答应我们的祈祷。
每当人们赞同我时,我总希望自己一定是错了。
恭维话从来没有让女人缴械,但可以让男人缴械。这就是性别差异。
女人在世上的日子要比男人好过得多。她们有太多禁忌。
女人因为男人的缺点而爱男人;如果男人的缺点足够多,女人什么事都可以原谅他们,哪怕是他们的智力。
女人代表着物质战胜了理智,正如男人代表着理智战胜了道德。
年轻人想要有信仰,但他们却没有;老年人不想要有信仰,但却办不到。
a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
***
a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
***
a little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
***
a man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
***
a poet can survive everything but a misprint.
***
all women become like their mothers. that is their tragedy. no man does. that's his.
***
always forgive your enemies. nothing annoys them so much.
***
america is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
***
arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
***
as long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
***
bad artists always admire each other's work.
***
between men and women there is no friendship possible. there is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
***
conscience and cowardice are really the same things.
***
dammit sir, it's your duty to get married. you can't be always living for pleasure.
***
democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
***
don't give a woman advice; one should never give a woman anything she can't wear in the evening.
***
education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
***
experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.
***
fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
***
how can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
***
i adore political parties. they are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.
***
i am not young enough to know everything.
***
i am so clever that sometimes i don’t understand a single word of what i’m saying.
***
i can resist everything except temptation.
***
i have made an important discovery…that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effects of intoxication.
***
i like talking to a brick wall, it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me.
***
i love acting. it is so much more real than life.
***
i often take exercise. why only yesterday i had breakfast in bed.
***
i think that god, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
***
i was working on the proof of one of my poems all morning, and took out a comma. in the afternoon i put it back again.
***
ignorance is like a delicate flower: touch it and the bloom is gone.
***
in this world there are only two tragedies. one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
***
it is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
***
it is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.
***
it is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.
***
it is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
***
it is very easy to endure the difficulties of one's enemies. it is the successes of one's friends that are hard to bear.
***
life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
***
like dear st francis of assisi i am wedded to poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success.
***
marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
***
music makes one feel so romantic—at least it always gets on one's nerves, which is the same thing nowadays.
***
no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. it looks so calculating.
***
one should never trust a woman who tells her real age. if she tells that, she'll tell anything.
***
please do not shoot the pianist. he is doing his best.
***
science is the record of dead religions.
***
tell the cook of this restaurant with my compliments that these are the very worst sandwiches in the whole world, and that when i ask for a watercress sandwich i do not mean a loaf with a field in the middle of it.
***
the basis of optimism is sheer terror.
***
the book of life begins with a man and a woman in a garden…it ends with revelations.
***
the difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
***
the only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future.
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the only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. it is never of any use to oneself.
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the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
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the play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
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the public is wonderfully tolerant. it forgives everything except genius.
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there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
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thirty five is a very attractive age; london society is full of women who have of their own free choice remained thirty-five for years.
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this suspense is terrible. i hope it will last.
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time is a waste of money.
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to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
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to love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
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true friends stab you in the front.
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when good americans die they go to paris. when bad americans die they go to america.
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all bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
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when i was young i used to think that money was the most important thing in life. now that i am old, i know it is.
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when the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
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whenever people agree with me i always feel i must be wrong.
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women are never disarmed by compliments. men always are. that is the difference between the sexes.
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women have a much better time than men in this world. there are far more things forbidden to them.
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women love men for their defects; if men have enough of them women will forgive them everything, even their gigantic intellects.
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women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
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young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.