Oscar Wilde > Quotes

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

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

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

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

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“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

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde

“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde

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

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

“A good friend will always stab you in the front.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Women are made to be loved not understood.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
― 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, The Critic as Artist

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”
― Oscar Wilde

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

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The heart was made to be broken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
― 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 Picture of Dorian Gray

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
― Oscar Wilde

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

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“I can resist anything except temptation.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“Who, being loved, is poor?”
― Oscar Wilde

“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“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

“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Nightingale And The Rose

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

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”
― Oscar Wilde

“With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?”
― Oscar Wilde

“No good deed goes unpunished.”
― Oscar Wilde

“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”
― Oscar Wilde

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

“Every woman is a rebel.”
― Oscar Wilde