Last Updated: October 7, 2022 by Quote.cc Team
Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. the early 1890s saw him become one of the most popular playwrights in London. But he was also a novelist, short-story writer, and poet. dabbling in everything from plays and poetry to essays and fiction.
We’ve taken a look back at Wilde’s finest quotes here for readers to get a taste of one of the most important minds to come out of the late 1880s. We hope you found some inspiration from these 150 Brilliant Oscar Wilde Quotes.
150 Best Oscar Wilde Quotes
Top 10 Oscar Wilde Quotes
“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” – Oscar Wilde
“Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.” – Oscar Wilde
“Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.” – Oscar Wilde
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” – Oscar Wilde
“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” – Oscar Wilde
“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” – Oscar Wilde
“Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.” – Oscar Wilde
“Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.” – Oscar Wilde
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde Quotes On Life
“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.” – Oscar Wilde
“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.” – Oscar Wilde
“Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.” – Oscar Wilde
“Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde
“When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.” – Oscar Wilde
“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” – Oscar Wilde
“The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.” – Oscar Wilde
“One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.” – Oscar Wilde
“I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.” – Oscar Wilde
“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” – Oscar Wilde
“If there were less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.” – Oscar Wilde
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde
“Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.” – Oscar Wilde
“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.” – Oscar Wilde
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” – Oscar Wilde
“Everything in moderation, including moderation.” – Oscar Wilde
“Man is least himself when he talks in his person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” – Oscar Wilde
“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” – Oscar Wilde
“I have never given adoration to anybody except myself.” – Oscar Wilde
“Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” – Oscar Wilde
“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” – Oscar Wilde
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” – Oscar Wilde
“I am the only person in the world. I should like to know thoroughly.” – Oscar Wilde
“I have the simplest of tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” – Oscar Wilde
“Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.” – Oscar Wilde
“Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act by the dictates of reason.” – Oscar Wilde
“Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.” – Oscar Wilde
“I can never travel without my diary; one should always have something sensational to read on the train.” – Oscar Wilde
“It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.” – Oscar Wilde
“Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.” – Oscar Wilde
“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.” – Oscar Wilde
“Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world, there are only individuals.” – Oscar Wilde
“The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.” – Oscar Wilde
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – Oscar Wilde
“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.” – Oscar Wilde
“To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.” – Oscar Wilde
“Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.” – Oscar Wilde
“The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.” – Oscar Wilde
“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.” – Oscar Wilde
“It is always the unreadable that occurs.” – Oscar Wilde
“A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.” – Oscar Wilde
“Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.” – Oscar Wilde
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde
“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.” – Oscar Wilde
“One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.” – Oscar Wilde
“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” – Oscar Wilde
“I am not young enough to know everything.” – Oscar Wilde
“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” – Oscar Wilde
“Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.” – Oscar Wilde
“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never dared to commit.” – Oscar Wilde
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde
“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.” – Oscar Wilde
“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” – Oscar Wilde
“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.” – Oscar Wilde
“There are only two kinds of people who are fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.” – Oscar Wilde
“Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.” – Oscar Wilde
“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we dislike.” – Oscar Wilde
“The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.” – Oscar Wilde
“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.” – Oscar Wilde
“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is fatal.” – Oscar Wilde
“When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” – Oscar Wilde
“The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.” – Oscar Wilde
“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.” – Oscar Wilde
“One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be.” – Oscar Wilde
“I have nothing to declare except my genius.” – Oscar Wilde
“We are each our devil, and we make this world our hell.” – Oscar Wilde
“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.” – Oscar Wilde
“Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.” – Oscar Wilde
“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.” – Oscar Wilde
“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” – Oscar Wilde
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde
“A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.” – Oscar Wilde
“To define is to limit.” – Oscar Wilde
“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.” – Oscar Wilde
“Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.” – Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde Quotes On Marriage
“The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties.” – Oscar Wilde
“Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.” – Oscar Wilde
“There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.” – Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde Quotes About Love
“Women are made to be loved, not understood.” – Oscar Wilde
“Who, being loved, is poor?” – Oscar Wilde
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.” – Oscar Wilde
“You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.” – Oscar Wilde
“Between men and women, there is no friendship possible. There is a passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.” – Oscar Wilde
“Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.” – Oscar Wilde
“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.” – Oscar Wilde
“When a man has once loved a woman, he will do anything for her except continue to love her.” – Oscar Wilde
“Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.” – Oscar Wilde
“Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.” – Oscar Wilde
“There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.” – Oscar Wilde
“One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.” – Oscar Wilde
“A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.” – Oscar Wilde
“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?” – Oscar Wilde
“I like men who have a future and women who have a past.” – Oscar Wilde
“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never dared to commit.” – Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde Quotes On Funny
“There is no sin except stupidity.” – Oscar Wilde
“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” – Oscar Wilde
“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” – Oscar Wilde
“As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.” – Oscar Wilde
“I can resist everything except temptation.” – Oscar Wilde
“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.” – Oscar Wilde
“The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.” – Oscar Wilde
“No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.” – Oscar Wilde
“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.” – Oscar Wilde
“There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.” – Oscar Wilde
“I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” – Oscar Wilde
“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.” – Oscar Wilde
“Genius is born—not paid.” – Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde Quotes About Death
“My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.” – Oscar Wilde
“One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.” – Oscar Wilde
“The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.” – Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde Quotes About Art
“No great artist ever sees things as they are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.” – Oscar Wilde
“A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.” – Oscar Wilde
“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” – Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde Quotes On Be Yourself
“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” – Oscar Wilde
“A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.” – Oscar Wilde
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde Quotes On Beauty
“It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.” – Oscar Wilde
“Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.” – Oscar Wilde
“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.” – Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde Quotes On Friendship
“An excellent man; he has no enemies and none of his friends like him.” – Oscar Wilde
“A good friend will always stab you in the front.” – Oscar Wilde
“True friends stab you in the front.” – Oscar Wilde
“I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.” – Oscar Wilde
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is for the best ending for one.” – Oscar Wilde
“Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a wonderful nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.” – Oscar Wilde
“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” – Oscar Wilde