Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), an Irish poet and playwright, was a leading figure in the Aesthetic Movement. Known for his wit and social commentary, he authored notable works such as “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1890), exploring the consequences of immoral actions, and “The Importance of Being Earnest” (1895), a comedic satire on Victorian society. Wilde faced personal tragedy when convicted of “gross indecency” in 1895 due to his homosexual relationships, leading to a two-year prison sentence. Following his release, he lived in exile and penned “De Profundis” (1905), a reflective letter to his former lover. Wilde died in 1900, leaving a lasting legacy for his eloquent writings and societal critiques despite the challenges he faced in his later life.
Oscar Wilde Quotes
1. “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
— Oscar Wilde
2. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
— Oscar Wilde
3. “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
— Oscar Wilde
4. “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
— Oscar Wilde
5. “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
— Oscar Wilde
6. “Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”
— Oscar Wilde
7. “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”
— Oscar Wilde
8. “You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
— Oscar Wilde
9. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
— Oscar Wilde
10. “Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”
— Oscar Wilde
11. “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”
— Oscar Wilde
12. “A good friend will always stab you in the front.”
— Oscar Wilde
13. “Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”
— Oscar Wilde
14. “We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”
— Oscar Wilde
15. “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
16. “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”
— Oscar Wilde
17. “I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”
— Oscar Wilde
18. “I am not young enough to know everything.”
— Oscar Wilde
19. “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
— Oscar Wilde
20. “I have nothing to declare except my genius.”
— Oscar Wilde
21. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
— Oscar Wilde
22. “Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”
— Oscar Wilde
23. “The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.”
— Oscar Wilde
24. “Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
— Oscar Wilde
25. “The heart was made to be broken.”
— Oscar Wilde
26. “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
27. “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
— Oscar Wilde
28. “Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success.”
— Oscar Wilde
29. “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
— Oscar Wilde
30. “Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you’ll never be invited to a party.”
— Oscar Wilde
31. “A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.”
— Oscar Wilde
32. “Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
— Oscar Wilde
33. “You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”
— Oscar Wilde
34. “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”
— Oscar Wilde
35. “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
36. “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
— Oscar Wilde
37. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
— Oscar Wilde
38. “Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
— Oscar Wilde
39. “Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
— Oscar Wilde
40. “No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”
— Oscar Wilde
41. “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
42. “If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.”
— Oscar Wilde
43. “To define is to limit.”
— Oscar Wilde
44. “Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.”
— Oscar Wilde
45. “The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.”
— Oscar Wilde
46. “Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.”
— Oscar Wilde
47. “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
— Oscar Wilde
48. “Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight For the greatest tragedy of them all Is never to feel the burning light.”
— Oscar Wilde
49. “You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
— Oscar Wilde
50. “I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”
— Oscar Wilde
51. “Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.”
— Oscar Wilde
52. “The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
— Oscar Wilde
53. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”
— Oscar Wilde
54. “A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.”
— Oscar Wilde
55. “I beg your pardon I didn’t recognise you – I’ve changed a lot.”
— Oscar Wilde
56. “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
— Oscar Wilde
57. “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
58. “Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.”
— Oscar Wilde
59. “A passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.”
— Oscar Wilde
60. “A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.”
— Oscar Wilde
61. “Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”
— Oscar Wilde
62. “Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.”
— Oscar Wilde
63. “Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
— Oscar Wilde
64. “There are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.”
— Oscar Wilde
65. “For one moment our lives met, our souls touched.”
— Oscar Wilde
66. “If you don’t get everything you want, think of the things you don’t get that you don’t want.”
— Oscar Wilde
67. “Every woman is a rebel.”
— Oscar Wilde
68. “Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.”
— Oscar Wilde
69. “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
— Oscar Wilde
70. “The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”
— Oscar Wilde
71. “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”
— Oscar Wilde
72. “Man is many things, but he is not rational.”
— Oscar Wilde
73. “Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”
— Oscar Wilde
74. “To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”
— Oscar Wilde
75. “I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.”
— Oscar Wilde
76. “To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.”
— Oscar Wilde
77. “It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.”
— Oscar Wilde
78. “I like talking to a brick wall- it’s the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!”
— Oscar Wilde
79. “I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”
— Oscar Wilde
80. “Arguments are to be avoided, they are always vulgar and often convincing.”
— Oscar Wilde
81. “And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.”
— Oscar Wilde
82. “When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.”
— Oscar Wilde
83. “Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.”
— Oscar Wilde
84. “One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”
— Oscar Wilde
85. “He wanted to be where no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.”
— Oscar Wilde
86. “I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do – the day after.”
— Oscar Wilde
87. “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
— Oscar Wilde
88. “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
— Oscar Wilde
89. “When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.”
— Oscar Wilde
90. “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
— Oscar Wilde
91. “The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart – hearts are made to be broken – but that it turns one’s heart to stone.”
— Oscar Wilde
92. “People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it’s impossible to count them accurately.”
— Oscar Wilde
93. “This wallpaper is dreadful, one of us will have to go.”
— Oscar Wilde
94. “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
— Oscar Wilde
95. “In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.”
— Oscar Wilde
96. “Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed.”
— Oscar Wilde
97. “The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.”
— Oscar Wilde
98. “One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.”
— Oscar Wilde
99. “Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.”
— Oscar Wilde
100. “Everything in moderation, including moderation.”
— Oscar Wilde
101. “With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?”
— Oscar Wilde
102. “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
— Oscar Wilde
103. “Its a beautiful woman’s fate to be the subject of conversation where ever she goes.”
— Oscar Wilde
104. “Whenever life sucks, remember you’re going to die someday.”
— Oscar Wilde
105. “She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.”
— Oscar Wilde
106. “A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.”
— Oscar Wilde
107. “With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.”
— Oscar Wilde
108. “The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.”
— Oscar Wilde
109. “It is perfectly monstrous,? he said, at last, ’the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.”
— Oscar Wilde
110. “You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.”
— Oscar Wilde
111. “Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character.”
— Oscar Wilde
112. “Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.”
— Oscar Wilde
113. “Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working.”
— Oscar Wilde
114. “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well. If it is worth having, it is worth waiting for. If it is worth attaining, it is worth fighting for. If it is worth experiencing, it is worth putting aside time for.”
— Oscar Wilde
115. “What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.”
— Oscar Wilde
116. “They’ve promised that dreams can come true – but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.”
— Oscar Wilde
117. “It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”
— Oscar Wilde
118. “Without order nothing can exist-without chaos nothing can evolve. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
— Oscar Wilde
119. “The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”
— Oscar Wilde
120. “Love is a misunderstanding between two fools.”
— Oscar Wilde
121. “Two men look out a window. One sees mud, the other sees the stars.”
— Oscar Wilde
122. “Nothing worth knowing can be taught.”
— Oscar Wilde
123. “Talent borrows, genius steals!”
— Oscar Wilde
124. “I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”
— Oscar Wilde
125. “To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.”
— Oscar Wilde
126. “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
— Oscar Wilde
127. “Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”
— Oscar Wilde
128. “What of Art? -It is a malady. – Love? -An Illusion. – Religion? -The fashionable substitute for Belief. – You are a sceptic. -Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith. – What are you? -To define is to limit.”
— Oscar Wilde
129. “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
130. “Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!”
— Oscar Wilde
131. “Let me be surrounded by luxury, I can do without the necessities!”
— Oscar Wilde
132. “I think it’s very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.”
— Oscar Wilde
133. “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”
— Oscar Wilde
134. “The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for.”
— Oscar Wilde
135. “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. We all have clouds above us but some see their silver linings. We all face difficulties but some of us are grateful that they aren’t worse.”
— Oscar Wilde
136. “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
— Oscar Wilde
137. “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
— Oscar Wilde
138. “A flower blossoms for its own joy.”
— Oscar Wilde
139. “Wisdom is to have dreams big enough not to lose sight when we pursue them.”
— Oscar Wilde
140. “The answers are all out there, we just need to ask the right questions.”
— Oscar Wilde
141. “Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
— Oscar Wilde
142. “Punctuality is the thief of time.”
— Oscar Wilde
143. “To live in this world is a rare thing; most people just exist.”
— Oscar Wilde
144. “I love acting. It is so much more real than life.”
— Oscar Wilde
145. “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”
— Oscar Wilde
146. “The world belongs to the discontented.”
— Oscar Wilde
147. “Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.”
— Oscar Wilde
148. “It’s beauty that captures your attention. personality which captures your heart.”
— Oscar Wilde
149. “The universe is God. I am God so that means I am the universe.”
— Oscar Wilde
150. “Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.”
— Oscar Wilde
151. “Life is a nightmare that prevents one from sleeping.”
— Oscar Wilde
152. “Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.”
— Oscar Wilde
153. “Don’t feed the trolls; nothing fuels them so much.”
— Oscar Wilde
154. “What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise for which we are later, in the fullness of time and understanding, very grateful for!”
— Oscar Wilde
155. “Life is too short to be in a hurry.”
— Oscar Wilde
156. “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
157. “Give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.”
— Oscar Wilde
158. “If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life.”
— Oscar Wilde
159. “Everyone may not be good, but there’s always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone shortly because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”
— Oscar Wilde
160. “I am very glad I have travelled. Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one’s prejudices.”
— Oscar Wilde
161. “What fire does not destroy, it hardens.”
— Oscar Wilde
162. “It was only in the theatre that I lived.”
— Oscar Wilde
163. “There is no sin except stupidity.”
— Oscar Wilde
164. “Love is like a war; easy to start but hard to end and you never know where it might take you.”
— Oscar Wilde
165. “What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn’t know the market place of any single thing.”
— Oscar Wilde
166. “Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”
— Oscar Wilde
167. “Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”
— Oscar Wilde
168. “All art is quite useless.”
— Oscar Wilde
169. “Life is a great disappointment.”
— Oscar Wilde
170. “Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.”
— Oscar Wilde
171. “The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.”
— Oscar Wilde
