Irish dramatist, poet, author, and one of the most iconic figures from late Victorian society. For his sexuality, he suffered the indignity and shame of imprisonment.
For a long time, his name was synonymous with scandal and intrigue. However, with changing social attitudes he is remembered with great affection for his biting social criticism, wit, and linguistic skills. (1854-1900)
– Oscar Wilde Quotes –
Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.
~ 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
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
~ Oscar Wilde
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
~ Oscar Wilde
A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
~ Oscar Wilde
The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.
~ Oscar Wilde
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
~ Oscar Wilde
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
~ Oscar Wilde
Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
~ Oscar Wilde
A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.
~ Oscar Wilde
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
~ Oscar Wilde
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
~ Oscar Wilde
A true friend stabs you in the front.
~ Oscar Wilde
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
~ Oscar Wilde
Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.
~ Oscar Wilde
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
~ Oscar Wilde
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
~ Oscar Wilde
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
~ Oscar Wilde
All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
~ Oscar Wilde
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
~ Oscar Wilde
Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
~ Oscar Wilde
Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.
~ Oscar Wilde
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
~ Oscar Wilde
Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.
~ Oscar Wilde
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating; people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
~ Oscar Wilde
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
~ Oscar Wilde
Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.
~ Oscar Wilde
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
~ Oscar Wilde
Hatred is blind, as well as love.
~ Oscar Wilde
Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
~ Oscar Wilde
Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.
~ Oscar Wilde
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
~ Oscar Wilde
A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
~ Oscar Wilde
Everything popular is wrong.
~ Oscar Wilde
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.
~ Oscar Wilde
Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.
~ Oscar Wilde
All art is quite useless.
~ Oscar Wilde
In examinations, the foolish ask questions the wise cannot answer.
~ Oscar Wilde
A man who pays his bills on time is soon forgotten.
~ Oscar Wilde
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
~ 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
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
~ Oscar Wilde
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 richness to life that nothing else can bring.
~ Oscar Wilde
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
~ 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
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
~ 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
I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.
~ Oscar Wilde
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
~ Oscar Wilde
An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.
~ Oscar Wilde
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
~ Oscar Wilde
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
~ Oscar Wilde
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
~ Oscar Wilde
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
~ Oscar Wilde
To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.
~ Oscar Wilde
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
~ Oscar Wilde
I can resist everything except temptation.
~ Oscar Wilde
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
~ Oscar Wilde
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
~ 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
Who, being loved, is poor?
~ Oscar Wilde
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
~ Oscar Wilde
Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
~ Oscar Wilde
I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
~ Oscar Wilde
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
~ Oscar Wilde
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
~ Oscar Wilde
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
~ Oscar Wilde
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
~ Oscar Wilde
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
~ Oscar Wilde
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
~ Oscar Wilde
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
~ Oscar Wilde
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
~ Oscar Wilde
I am not young enough to know everything.
~ Oscar Wilde
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
~ Oscar Wilde
The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.
~ Oscar Wilde
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
~ Oscar Wilde
Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
~ Oscar Wilde
Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.
~ Oscar Wilde
The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
~ Oscar Wilde
Though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something.
~ Oscar Wilde
I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house–tops.
~ Oscar Wilde
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
~ Oscar Wilde
If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.
~ Oscar Wilde
I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.
~ Oscar Wilde
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
~ Oscar Wilde
Duty is what one expects from others.
~ Oscar Wilde
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
~ Oscar Wilde
