199 Oscar Wilde Famous Quotes You Should Know

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, commonly known as Oscar Wilde, was an Irish playwright, poet, author, and literary figure in Victorian England. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, on October 16, 1854, and died in Paris, France, on November 30, 1900, at a young age (46 years).

Wilde’s fame primarily relies on his three notable masterpieces, include “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (novel), “Lady Windermere’s Fan” (comic), and “The Importance of Being Earnest” (comic). However, many famous quotes or saying of Oscar Wilde illustrate the various aspects of living.

Here, we have written down the 200 top famous quotes or sayings of Oscar Wilde that you should read at least once in your life.

Famous Quotations By Oscar Wilde

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” – Oscar Wilde
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – Oscar Wilde
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” – 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
“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.” – Oscar Wilde
“A good friend will always stab you in the front.” – Oscar Wilde
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde
“Selfishness is not living as one wish to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” – Oscar Wilde
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” – 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
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde
“There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope.” – 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
“Yes: I am a dreamer. For 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
“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 man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of Fiction.” – Oscar Wilde
“Wisdom is to have dreams big enough not to lose sight when we pursue them.” – Oscar Wilde
“I can never travel without my diary; one should always have something sensational to read on the train.” – Oscar Wilde
“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” – Oscar Wilde
“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.”– Oscar Wilde
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” – Oscar Wilde
“I have the simplest of tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” – Oscar Wilde
“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” – Oscar Wilde
“I am not young enough to know everything.” – Oscar Wilde
“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.” – 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
“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.” – Oscar Wilde
“The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.” – Oscar Wilde
“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” – Oscar Wilde
“The only good thing to do with good advice is pass it on; it is never of any use to oneself.” – Oscar Wilde
“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.” – Oscar Wilde
“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” – Oscar Wilde
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – 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
“The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.” – Oscar Wilde
“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.” – Oscar Wilde
“A flower blossoms for its own joy.” – Oscar Wilde
“It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.” – Oscar Wilde
“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.” – Oscar Wilde
“Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.” – Oscar Wilde
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde
“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” – Oscar Wilde
“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.” – 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
“To define is to limit.” – Oscar Wilde
“No good deed goes unpunished.” – 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
“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.” – Oscar Wilde
“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.” – Oscar Wilde
“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde
“Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.” – Oscar Wilde
“Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.” – Oscar Wilde
“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” – Oscar Wilde
“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.” – Oscar Wilde
“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.” – Oscar Wilde
“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.” – 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
“Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!” – Oscar Wilde
“With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?” – Oscar Wilde
“Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.” – Oscar Wilde
“I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.” – Oscar Wilde
“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” – Oscar Wilde
“The heart was made to be broken.” – Oscar Wilde
“Everything in moderation, including moderation.” – Oscar Wilde
“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.” – Oscar Wilde
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” – Oscar Wilde
“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” – Oscar Wilde
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” – Oscar Wilde
“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” – Oscar Wilde
“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” – Oscar Wilde
“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.” – Oscar Wilde
“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.” – Oscar Wilde
“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.” – Oscar Wilde
“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“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
“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise” – Oscar Wilde
“The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the Young know everything.” – Oscar Wilde
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde
” An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” – Oscar Wilde
“Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working.”– Oscar Wilde
“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.” – Oscar Wilde
“To be popular one must be a mediocrity.” – Oscar Wilde
“Life is too important to be taken seriously.” – Oscar Wilde
“Never love anybody that treats you like you’re ordinary.” – Oscar Wilde
“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” – Oscar Wilde
“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.” – Oscar Wilde
“One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.” – Oscar Wilde
“Everything popular is wrong.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” – Oscar Wilde
“They’ve promised that dreams can come true – but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.” – Oscar Wilde
“The artist is the creator of beautiful things.” – Oscar Wilde
“With Freedom Books Flowers and the Moon who could not be happy?” – Oscar Wilde
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” – Oscar Wilde
“I can resist anything except temptation.” – Oscar Wilde
“He wanted to be where no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.” – Oscar Wilde
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” – Oscar Wilde
“Who, being loved, is poor?” – Oscar Wilde
“Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.” – Oscar Wilde
“I have nothing to declare except my genius.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do – the day after.” – Oscar Wilde
“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.” – Oscar Wilde
“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” – Oscar Wilde
“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.” – 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
“Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.” – Oscar Wilde
“I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.” – Oscar Wilde
“To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.” – Oscar Wilde
“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” – Oscar Wilde
“Man is many things, but he is not rational.” – Oscar Wilde
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.” – Oscar Wilde
“A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.” – Oscar Wilde
“If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life.” – Oscar Wilde
“Nowadays 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
“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.” – Oscar Wilde
“There is no sin except stupidity.” – Oscar Wilde
“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.” – Oscar Wilde
“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“Some things are more precious because they don’t last long.” – Oscar Wilde
“Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” – 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
“Life is a nightmare that prevents one from sleeping.” – Oscar Wilde
“I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.” – Oscar Wilde
“Indeed, I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.” – Oscar Wilde
“Alas, I’m dying beyond my means.” – Oscar Wilde
“Ultimately, all the bond of companionship whether in friendship or in friendship is conversation.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“Music is the art which is the most nigh to tear and memory.” – Oscar Wilde
“With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.” – Oscar Wilde
“True friends stab you in the front.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.” – Oscar Wilde
“A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.” – Oscar Wilde
“Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.” – Oscar Wilde
“A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.” – Oscar Wilde
“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.” – Oscar Wilde
“Arguments are to be avoided, they are always vulgar and often convincing.” – Oscar Wilde
“One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.” – Oscar Wilde
“The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.” – Oscar Wilde
“There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.” – Oscar Wilde
“Yet each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard, some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword!” – Oscar Wilde
“Those whom the gods love grows young.” – Oscar Wilde
“In married life three is company and two none.” – Oscar Wilde
“When a man has once loved a woman, he will do anything for her except continue to love her.” – Oscar Wilde
“The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.” – Oscar Wilde
“How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.” – Oscar Wilde
“There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.” – Oscar Wilde
“I can resist everything except temptation.” – Oscar Wilde
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde
“Talent borrows, genius steals!” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“No good deeds goes unpunished.” – Oscar Wilde
“The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.” – Oscar Wilde
“Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple and simple thing is the right thing.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“I beg your pardon I didn’t recognize you – I’ve changed a lot.” – Oscar Wilde
“A passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.” – Oscar Wilde
“The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for.” – Oscar Wilde
“Every woman is a rebel.” – Oscar Wilde
“The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.” – Oscar Wilde
“For one moment our lives met, our souls touched.” – Oscar Wilde
“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“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
“I like talking to a brick wall- it’s the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!” – Oscar Wilde
“She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.” – Oscar Wilde
“A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.” – Oscar Wilde
“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.” – Oscar Wilde
“The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.” – Oscar Wilde
“Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character.” – Oscar Wilde
‘Let me be surrounded by luxury, I can do without the necessities!” – Oscar Wilde
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” – Oscar Wilde
“Two men look out a window. One sees mud, the other sees the stars.” – Oscar Wilde
“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.” – Oscar Wilde
“To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.” – Oscar Wilde
“Love is a misunderstanding between two fools.” – Oscar Wilde
“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
“Without order nothing can exist-without chaos nothing can evolve. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde
“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.” – Oscar Wilde
“Love is like a war; easy to start but hard to end and you never know where it might take you.” – Oscar Wilde
“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.” – Oscar Wilde
“Nothing worth knowing can be taught.” – Oscar Wilde
“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.” – Oscar Wilde

FAQs

What notable quotes does Oscar Wilde have?

Almost all Oscar’s quotes are famous, and if you ask someone about his best quotes, you may get the same answer. However, here we’ve written down his 5 most noticeable quotes along with their source.

“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.” – The Decay of Lying
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” – The Critic as Artist
“I love acting. It is so much more real than life.” – The Picture of Dorian Gray
“The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.” – The Picture of Dorian Gray
I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying. – The Remarkable Rocket

What did Oscar Wilde say about marriage?

You can find different famous sayings of Oscar against marriage or married life. He thought marriage is a way of ruining life, and one should never get married for a peaceful living. However, Oscar’s most famous quotation about marriage is, “There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.”

What were Oscar Wilde’s dying words?

The last words of Oscar Wilde were, “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.” In his last days, he was in a cheap Parisian hotel with agitated decor; actually, his stay at this impoverished hotel was very interesting for him.