100+ Oscar Wilde Quotes and Sayings to Uplift and Inspire You
by Menaga K
Updated Aug 14, 2023
Oscar Wilde Quotes
Oscar Wilde was a literary icon of the late 19th century, renowned for his wit, humor, and flamboyant style. He was a master of the epigram, a concise and clever statement that often contained a deeper meaning or social commentary. Many of his quotes have become timeless gems of wisdom, offering insights on everything from love and life to art and society. Wilde's works have continued to inspire and captivate readers worldwide, and his quotes are widely shared on social media and beyond. His words remind us to be true to ourselves, to embrace our individuality, and to live life to the fullest.
Wilde Quotes About Life
"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
- “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” - Oscar Wilde,
- “Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”
- "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell the truth."
- "I can resist everything except temptation."
- "True friends stab you in the front."
- "Everything in moderation, including moderation."
- "Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known."
- "You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear."
- "I am not young enough to know everything."
- "The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."
- "I have the simplest of tastes. I am always satisfied with the best."
- "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
- "I can never travel without my diary, one should always have something sensational to read on the train."
- "You can never be overdressed or overeducated."
- "The truth is rarely pure and never simple."
Oscar Wilde Quotes About Love
“With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?”
1. “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
2. “The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.”
3. “She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.”
5. “One should always be in love. That’s the reason one should never marry.”
6. “Music makes one feel so romantic – at least it always gets on one’s nerves – which is the same thing nowadays.”
7. “Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.”
8. “I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them to be real.”
9. “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.”
10. “Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
11. “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.”
12. “If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.”
13 “I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.”
14. “Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed.
15. “One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.”
16. “Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”
17. “She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.”
18. “With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?”
19. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
20. “I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
21. “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”
22. “When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
23 “After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”
24. “Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.”
Best Oscar Wilde Quotes
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
1. “No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”
2. “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
3. “Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”
4. “Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
5. “The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.”
6. “The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
7. “Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.”
8. “There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.”
9. “The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.”
10. “The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.”
11. “A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.”
12. “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
13. “No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”
14. “One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”
15. “It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But it is better to be good than to be ugly.”
16. “To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.”
17. “Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.”
18. “It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”
19. “Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.”
20. “A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.” – Oscar Wilde
Motivational Oscar Wilde Quotes
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
1. “We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.” – Oscar Wilde
2. “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
3. “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” – Oscar Wilde
4. “When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” – Oscar Wilde
5. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde
6. “What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde
7. “The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.” – Oscar Wilde
8. “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
9. “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
10. “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise, they’ll kill you.” – Oscar Wilde
11. “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” – Oscar Wilde
13. “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” – Oscar Wilde
14. “The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – Oscar Wilde
15. “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde
16. “You can never be overdressed or over-educated.” – Oscar Wilde
17. “I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.” – Oscar Wilde
18. “I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.” – Oscar Wilde
19. “A good friend will always stab you in the front.” – Oscar Wilde
20. “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” – Oscar Wilde
21. “Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” – Oscar Wilde
22. “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” – Oscar Wilde
Inspiring Oscar Wilde Quotes
“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”
1. “Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde
2. “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
3. “Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.” – Oscar Wilde
4. “I can resist anything except temptation.” – Oscar Wilde
5. “Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.” – Oscar Wilde
6. “When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.” – Oscar Wilde
7. “One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.” – Oscar Wilde
8. “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
9. “Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.” – Oscar Wilde
10. “Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.” – Oscar Wilde
11. “Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.” – Oscar Wilde
12. “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
13. “No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.” – Oscar Wilde
14. “Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.” – Oscar Wilde
15. “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” – Oscar Wilde
16. “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” – Oscar Wilde
17. “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” – Oscar Wilde
18. “An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.” – Oscar Wilde
19. “Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.” – Oscar Wilde
20. “The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.” – Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde Quotes About Art
“The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.”
1. “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”
2. “Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.”
Life imitates art far more than art imitates life - Oscar Wilde. #quotes #art #life #imitates
3. “The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.”
4. “Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent color, variety, and strangeness. Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination.”
5. “Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realizes for us that which we desire.”
6. “A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.”
7. “Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.”
8. “The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.”
9. “No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.”
10. “There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate – not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.”
11. “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
12. “Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.”
13. “A critic should be taught to criticize a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.”
14. “The Lady’s World should be made the recognized organ for the expression of women’s opinions on all subjects of literature, art and modern life, and yet it should be a magazine that men could read with pleasure.”
15. “All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.”
16. “It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.”
17. “All art is quite useless.”
18. “What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.”
19. “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.”
20. “Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”
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Oscar Wilde Quotes - FAQs
Oscar Wilde was a literary icon of the late 19th century, renowned for his wit, humor, and flamboyant style.
He was a master of the epigram, a concise and clever statement that often contained a deeper meaning or social commentary. Many of his quotes have become timeless gems of wisdom, offering insights on everything from love and life to art and society.