The Ultimate 200+ Oscar Wilde Quotes Collection On Everything

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s.

Oscar Wilde Inspirational Quotes

1. A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. —Oscar Wilde
2. 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
3. A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally. —Oscar Wilde
4. A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. —Oscar Wilde
5. A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her. —Oscar Wilde
6. A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies. —Oscar Wilde
7. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. —Oscar Wilde
8. A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction. —Oscar Wilde
9. A poet can survive everything but a misprint. —Oscar Wilde
10. A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. —Oscar Wilde
11. A true friend stabs you in the front. —Oscar Wilde
12. A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. —Oscar Wilde
13. Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means. —Oscar Wilde
14. Alas, I am dying beyond my means. —Oscar Wilde
15. All art is quite useless. —Oscar Wilde
16. All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. —Oscar Wilde
17. All that I desire to point out is a general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life. —Oscar Wilde
18. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his. —Oscar Wilde
19. Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much. —Oscar Wilde
20. Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds. —Oscar Wilde
21. Ambition is the last refuge of the failure. —Oscar Wilde
22. America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. —Oscar Wilde
23. An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him. —Oscar Wilde
24. An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. —Oscar Wilde
25. Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. —Oscar Wilde
26. Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion. —Oscar Wilde
27. Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing. —Oscar Wilde
28. Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. —Oscar Wilde
29. As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied. —Oscar Wilde
30. 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
31. Authority is quite degrading. —Oscar Wilde
32. Between men and women, there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. —Oscar Wilde
33. Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same. —Oscar Wilde
34. Biography lends to death a new terror. —Oscar Wilde
35. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. —Oscar Wilde
36. Charity creates a multitude of sins. —Oscar Wilde
37. Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. —Oscar Wilde
38. Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. —Oscar Wilde
39. A conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative. —Oscar Wilde
40. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. —Oscar Wilde
41. Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. —Oscar Wilde
42. Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. —Oscar Wilde
43. Do you really think it is a 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
44. 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
45. Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. —Oscar Wilde
46. Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. —Oscar Wilde
47. Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching. —Oscar Wilde
48. Everything popular is wrong. —Oscar Wilde
49. Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing. —Oscar Wilde
50. Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. —Oscar Wilde
51. Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. —Oscar Wilde
52. Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life. —Oscar Wilde
53. Hatred is blind, as well as love. —Oscar Wilde
54. He has no enemies but is intensely disliked by his friends. —Oscar Wilde
55. 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
56. How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive. —Oscar Wilde
57. 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
58. I am not young enough to know everything. —Oscar Wilde
59. I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying. —Oscar Wilde
60. I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly. —Oscar Wilde
61. I can resist everything except temptation. —Oscar Wilde
62. 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
63. 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
64. I have nothing to declare except my genius. —Oscar Wilde
65. I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. —Oscar Wilde
66. I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. —Oscar Wilde
67. I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train. —Oscar Wilde
68. I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works. —Oscar Wilde
69. I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. —Oscar Wilde
70. I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything. —Oscar Wilde
71. I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. —Oscar Wilde
72. I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy. —Oscar Wilde
73. I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability. —Oscar Wilde
74. I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead. —Oscar Wilde
75. If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all. —Oscar Wilde
76. If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized. —Oscar Wilde
77. If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk. —Oscar Wilde
78. If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world. —Oscar Wilde
79. If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life. —Oscar Wilde
80. If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism. —Oscar Wilde
81. The illusion is the first of all pleasures. —Oscar Wilde
82. In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. —Oscar Wilde
83. In America, the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever. —Oscar Wilde
84. In America, the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience. —Oscar Wilde
85. In married life, three is a company, and two none. —Oscar Wilde
86. In modern life, nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin. —Oscar Wilde
87. It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information. —Oscar Wilde
88. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. —Oscar Wilde
89. It is always the unreadable that occurs. —Oscar Wilde
90. It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly. —Oscar Wilde
91. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. —Oscar Wilde
92. It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art. —Oscar Wilde
93. It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes. —Oscar Wilde
94. It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned. —Oscar Wilde
95. It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection. —Oscar Wilde
96. 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
97. Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. —Oscar Wilde
98. Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is for the best ending for one. —Oscar Wilde
99. Life imitates art far more than Art imitates Life. —Oscar Wilde
100. Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. —Oscar Wilde
101. Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not. —Oscar Wilde
102. Life is too important to be taken seriously. —Oscar Wilde
103. Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable. —Oscar Wilde
104. Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. —Oscar Wilde
105. Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. —Oscar Wilde
106. Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us. —Oscar Wilde
107. Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance. —Oscar Wilde
108. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed. —Oscar Wilde
109. Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. —Oscar Wilde
110. Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike. —Oscar Wilde
111. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. —Oscar Wilde
112. Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes. —Oscar Wilde
113. Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty. —Oscar Wilde
114. No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. —Oscar Wilde
115. No man is rich enough to buy back his past. —Oscar Wilde
116. No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. —Oscar Wilde
117. No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating. —Oscar Wilde
118. Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul. —Oscar Wilde
119. Nothing is so aggravating than calmness. —Oscar Wilde
120. Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm. —Oscar Wilde
121. One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation. —Oscar Wilde
122. 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
123. One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry. —Oscar Wilde
124. One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards. —Oscar Wilde
125. One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged. —Oscar Wilde
126. One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead. —Oscar Wilde
127. Only the shallow know themselves. —Oscar Wilde
128. Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you. —Oscar Wilde
129. 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
130. Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. —Oscar Wilde
131. Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected. —Oscar Wilde
132. Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both. —Oscar Wilde
133. Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are. —Oscar Wilde
134. The quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit. —Oscar Wilde
135. Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities. —Oscar Wilde
136. Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement. —Oscar Wilde
137. Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. —Oscar Wilde
138. Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow. —Oscar Wilde
139. Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world, there are only individuals. —Oscar Wilde
140. Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. —Oscar Wilde
141. Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result. —Oscar Wilde
142. The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray. —Oscar Wilde
143. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. —Oscar Wilde
144. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. —Oscar Wilde
145. The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic. —Oscar Wilde
146. The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. —Oscar Wilde
147. The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. —Oscar Wilde
148. The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means. —Oscar Wilde
149. The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates. —Oscar Wilde
150. The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world. —Oscar Wilde
151. The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you. —Oscar Wilde
152. The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything. —Oscar Wilde
153. The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. —Oscar Wilde
154. The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself. —Oscar Wilde
155. The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it… I can resist everything but temptation. —Oscar Wilde
156. The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius. —Oscar Wilde
157. The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. —Oscar Wilde
158. The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it. —Oscar Wilde
159. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. —Oscar Wilde
160. The truth is rarely pure and never simple. —Oscar Wilde
161. The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation. —Oscar Wilde
162. The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves. —Oscar Wilde
163. The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life. —Oscar Wilde
164. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. —Oscar Wilde
165. The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable. —Oscar Wilde
166. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up. —Oscar Wilde
167. There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing. —Oscar Wilde
168. There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. —Oscar Wilde
169. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us. —Oscar Wilde
170. There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies. —Oscar Wilde
171. There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. —Oscar Wilde
172. There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad. —Oscar Wilde
173. There is no sin except stupidity. —Oscar Wilde
174. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. —Oscar Wilde
175. There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about. —Oscar Wilde
176. There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose. —Oscar Wilde
177. There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is poor. The poor can think of nothing else. —Oscar Wilde
178. There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. —Oscar Wilde
179. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better. —Oscar Wilde
180. There’s nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It’s a thing no married man knows anything about. —Oscar Wilde
181. These days man knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing. —Oscar Wilde
182. This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last. —Oscar Wilde
183. Those whom the god’s love grow young. —Oscar Wilde
184. To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect. —Oscar Wilde
185. To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. —Oscar Wilde
186. To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. —Oscar Wilde
187. True friends stab you in the front. —Oscar Wilde
188. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. —Oscar Wilde
189. What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. —Oscar Wilde
190. What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying. —Oscar Wilde
191. When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her. —Oscar Wilde
192. When good Americans die they go to Paris. —Oscar Wilde
193. 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
194. When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers. —Oscar Wilde
195. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives. —Oscar Wilde
196. Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. —Oscar Wilde
197. While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance. —Oscar Wilde
198. Who, being loved, is poor? —Oscar Wilde
199. Why was I born with such contemporaries? —Oscar Wilde
200. The woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat. —Oscar Wilde
201. Women are made to be loved, not understood. —Oscar Wilde
202. Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes. —Oscar Wilde
203. Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects. —Oscar Wilde
204. Work is the curse of the drinking classes. —Oscar Wilde