"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

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
— Oscar Wilde

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

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

"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

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

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

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

"I am not young enough to know everything."
— Oscar Wilde

"I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there."
— Oscar Wilde

"I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability."
— Oscar Wilde

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

"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 and Three Stories)

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

"Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit."
— Oscar Wilde

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

"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

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

"Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"I never travel without my diary. One must always have something sensational to read on the train."
— Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)

"The heart was made to be broken."
— 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

"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."
— 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

"Women are made to be loved not understood."
— Oscar Wilde (An Ideal Husband)

"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"Who, being loved, is poor?"
— Oscar Wilde

"Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."
— Oscar Wilde

"I can resist anything, except temptation."
— Oscar Wilde

"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it."
— 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)

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

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

"No good deed goes unpunished."
— Oscar Wilde

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."
— Oscar Wilde

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

"I have nothing to declare except my genius."
— Oscar Wilde

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."
— Oscar Wilde (An Ideal Husband)

"Every woman is a rebel."
— Oscar Wilde

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

"The very essence of romance is uncertainty."
— Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays)

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

"The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last."
— Oscar Wilde