1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde Quotes
812 Quotes on Love, Forgiveness, Rebellion, and Embracing Your Unique Voice

Experience the wit and wisdom of Oscar Wilde through his most famous quotes. From the importance of love and forgiveness to the rebellion within every woman, delve into the captivating world of Wilde's words and be inspired to embrace your own unique voice.

Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright who gained popularity in London in the late 19th century. Known for his epigrams and plays, Wilde achieved great success with works such as The Picture of Dorian Gray. He was also infamous for his conviction for gross indecency, resulting in imprisonment and ultimately, his early death at the age of 46.

Born to Anglo-Irish parents in Dublin, Wilde showed exceptional talent and intellect from a young age. After studying at prestigious universities, he became associated with aestheticism and immersed himself in literary pursuits. With his sharp wit and extravagant style, Wilde became a prominent figure in social circles. He expressed his artistic ideas through various literary endeavors, including poetry, lectures, and journalism.

Wilde’s fascination with art led him to write dramas that combined aesthetic details with broader societal themes. Although faced with obstacles such as the prohibition of biblical subjects on English stages, he proved resilient and went on to become one of the most successful playwrights of his time. However, his fame took a dramatic turn when he prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry for libel due to their connection through Lord Alfred Douglas. The trial resulted not only in Wilde dropping charges but also in his arrest and conviction for homosexual acts.

While serving his sentence, Wilde penned De Profundis, a reflective letter that delves into his spiritual journey during his trials. Upon release, he fled to France where he wrote what would be his last work - The Ballad of Reading Gaol - an introspective poem inspired by the harsh realities of prison life. Wilde never returned to Ireland or Britain before his untimely demise. Despite enduring personal turmoil and societal backlash, Oscar Wilde left an indelible mark on literature and continues to be remembered as one of history's most influential writers.

✵ 16. October 1854 – 30. November 1900
Oscar Wilde photo

Works

The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Soul of Man under Socialism
Oscar Wilde: 812 quotes1011 likes

Famous Oscar Wilde Quotes

“You will always love, and you will always be loved.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

“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

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Lord Darlington, Act III
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”

Oscar Wilde

Variant: Always forgive your enemies — nothing annoys them so much.

Oscar Wilde Quotes about life

“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 Lady Windermere's Fan

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan

“Life is too short to learn German”

Oscar Wilde

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Lord Goring, Act III
Source: An Ideal Husband (1895)

“I love acting. It is so much more real than life.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Cecily, Act II
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Oscar Wilde Quotes about people

“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Lord Darlington, Act I
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

De Profundis (1897)

“Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.”

Oscar Wilde book The Happy Prince and Other Tales

&quot; The Remarkable Rocket http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/179/&quot;. <br class="br">The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) <br class="br">Variant: Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.

“Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.”

Oscar Wilde

This also appears in Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Act II
The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Mrs Chevely, Act I
An Ideal Husband (1895)

Oscar Wilde: Trending quotes

“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 book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible….”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde Quotes

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”

Oscar Wilde

Source: The Duchess of Padua

“I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there”

Oscar Wilde

No known source in Oscar Wilde&#x27;s works. Earliest known example of a similar quote comes from a 2001 usenet post https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.atheism/ZadPWBw-wew/G_3tx370wpoJ (not attributed to Wilde) <br class="br">Attributed to Wilde on Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/15736-i-don-t-want-to-go-to-heaven-none-of-my?page=83 some time on or before January 2008. <br class="br">Bears some resemblance to Machiavelli&#x27;s deathbed dream https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli#Disputed. <br class="br">Disputed

“Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What (women) like is to be a man’s last romance.”

Oscar Wilde

“How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?”

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. V, st. 14
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”

Oscar Wilde

“Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”

Oscar Wilde

“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

“I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”

Oscar Wilde

“There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.”

Oscar Wilde

Variant: There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

“It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Variant: It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love
Source: An Ideal Husband

“A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Variant: A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Lord Darlington, Act II
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Oscar Wilde quote: “When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”

“When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Source: An Ideal Husband

“The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.”

Oscar Wilde

“They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.”

Oscar Wilde

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde quote: “Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.”

“Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Source: An Ideal Husband

“Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.”

Oscar Wilde

Source: The Complete Fairy Tales

“You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

“Only love can keep anyone alive…”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

Oscar Wilde quote: “Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.”

“Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.”

Oscar Wilde

This quote was instead first mentioned in a 1931 book titled “Since Calvary: An Interpretation of Christian History” by the comparative religion specialist Lewis Browne.
Disputed

“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray (Obraz Doriana Graye)

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”

Oscar Wilde

Source: The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“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

Variant: 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.
Source: The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”

Oscar Wilde book Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

Source: Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”

Oscar Wilde

“The heart was made to be broken.”

Oscar Wilde

“Experience, the name men give to their mistakes.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mr. Dumby, Act III. <br class="br">Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880) <br class="br">Variant: Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. <br class="br">Variant: Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. <br class="br">Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray <br class="br">Context: Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. [First used by Wilde in Vera; or, The Nihilists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera;_or,_The_Nihilists. ]

“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 book The Canterville Ghost

Source: The Canterville Ghost http://www.planetmonk.com/wilde/savile/canterville.c1.html (1887)

“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

A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)

“I can resist everything except temptation.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Lord Darlington, Act I
Variant: I can resist everything except temptation
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

“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 book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Lord Darlington, Act III.
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
Variant: What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Context: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. [Answering the question, what is a cynic? ]

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Variant: If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde quote: “I have nothing to declare except my genius.”

“I have nothing to declare except my genius.”

Oscar Wilde

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Variant: Often quoted as: Life is far too important to be taken seriously.
Variant: Often quoted as: Life is too important to be taken seriously.
Variant: Often quoted as: Life is too important to take seriously.
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Lord Darlington, Act I

Similar authors

Mikhail Lermontov photo
Mikhail Lermontov34
Russian writer, poet and painter None
Jan Neruda photo
Jan Neruda7
Czech poet, theater reviewer, publicist and writer None
Robert Southey photo
Robert Southey51
British poet None
Robert Louis Stevenson photo
Robert Louis Stevenson118
Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer None
Léon Bloy photo
Léon Bloy22
French writer, poet and essayist None
Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo
Elizabeth Barrett Browning88
English poet, author None
Matthew Arnold photo
Matthew Arnold166
English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector… None
Ivan Turgenev photo
Ivan Turgenev7
Russian writer None
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet None
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley246
English Romantic poet None