Oscar Wilde's Quotes

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.

Wikipedia Quotes

80 Quotes

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."

— Oscar Wilde

"Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it."

— Oscar Wilde

"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."

— Oscar Wilde

"The aim of life is self-development. To realize ones nature perfectly that is what each of us is here for."

— Oscar Wilde

"The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself."

— Oscar Wilde

"The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention."

— Oscar Wilde

"A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction."

— Oscar Wilde

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."

— 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

"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

— Oscar Wilde

"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."

— Oscar Wilde

"The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything."

— Oscar Wilde

"A good friend will always stab you in the front."

— 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

"The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out."

— 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

"Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer."

— Oscar Wilde

"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."

— Oscar Wilde

"A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company."

— Oscar Wilde

"I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there."

— Oscar Wilde

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."

— Oscar Wilde

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."

— Oscar Wilde

"I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best."

— Oscar Wilde

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."

— 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

"I like men who have a future and women who have a past."

— Oscar Wilde

"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means."

— Oscar Wilde

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."

— Oscar Wilde

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you."

— 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

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his."

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."

— Oscar Wilde

"Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much."

— Oscar Wilde

"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."

— Oscar Wilde

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

— Oscar Wilde

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

— 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

"The world is a stage and the play is badly cast."

— 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

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

— 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

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."

— Oscar Wilde

"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about."

— Oscar Wilde

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

— 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

"There is no sin except stupidity."

— Oscar Wilde

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."

— 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

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

— 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

"Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us."

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

"Everything in moderation, including moderation."

— Oscar Wilde

"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike."

— 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."

— Oscar Wilde

"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power."

— Oscar Wilde

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

— Oscar Wilde

"To define is to limit."

— Oscar Wilde

"Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes."

— Oscar Wilde

"My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s."

— Oscar Wilde

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

— 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

"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul."

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

"I am not young enough to know everything."

— Oscar Wilde

"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

"I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying."

— 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

"We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities."

— Oscar Wilde

"I am too fond of reading books to care to write them."

— Oscar Wilde

"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."

— Oscar Wilde

"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."

— Oscar Wilde

"I can resist anything except temptation."

— 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

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."

— 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

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

— Oscar Wilde

"You can never be overdressed or overeducated."

— Oscar Wilde

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