Oscar Wilde Quotes

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, History would have been different.”

- Oscar Wilde

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

- Oscar Wilde

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

- Oscar Wilde

“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”

- 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

“There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.”

- Oscar Wilde

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

- Oscar Wilde

“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”

- Oscar Wilde

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

- 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

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

- Oscar Wilde

“Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”

- Oscar Wilde

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”

- 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

“The heart was made to be broken.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.”

- Oscar Wilde

“The one charm about the past is that it is the past.”

- Oscar Wilde

"She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm."

- Oscar Wilde

“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”

- Oscar Wilde

“We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes."

- Oscar Wilde

“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative.”

- 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

“Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.”

- Oscar Wilde

“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.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Only the shallow know themselves.”

- Oscar Wilde

"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."

- Oscar Wilde

"Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result."

- 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

"To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect."

- Oscar Wilde

"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

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

- Oscar Wilde

"Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it."

- Oscar Wilde

"The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable."

- Oscar Wilde

“Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art.” 

- Oscar Wilde

"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship."

- Oscar Wilde

"Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing."

- Oscar Wilde

"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault."

- Oscar Wilde

"Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you."

- Oscar Wilde

"A man who does not think for himself does not think at all."

- Oscar Wilde

"Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both."

- Oscar Wilde

"The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates."

- Oscar Wilde

"Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow."

- Oscar Wilde

"I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect."

- Oscar Wilde

"The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic."

- 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

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

- Oscar Wilde

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Who, being loved, is poor?”

- Oscar Wilde

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

- Oscar Wilde

“Every woman is a rebel.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Some things are more precious because they don't last long.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Punctuality is the thief of time.”

- Oscar Wilde

“One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Some things are too important to be taken seriously.”

- Oscar Wilde

“I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Misfortunes one can endure — they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults — ah! — there is the sting of life.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Hearts live by being wounded.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.”

- Oscar Wilde

“A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.”

- Oscar Wilde

“It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion."

- Oscar Wilde

"A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure."

- Oscar Wilde

“Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Life is a question of nerves, and fibers, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of color in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play... I tell you, that it is on things like these that our lives depend."

- 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

“To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.”

- 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

“How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?”

- Oscar Wilde

“I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.”

- Oscar Wilde

“The optimist sees the donut. The pessimist sees the hole.”

- Oscar Wilde

“If you want to be a doormat you have to lay yourself down first.”

- Oscar Wilde

“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.”

- Oscar Wilde

“A passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“Beauty is a form of Genius ― is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“When you really want love, you will find it waiting for you.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“Wisdom comes with winters.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“What fire does not destroy, it hardens.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.” 

- 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

“Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“She lives the poetry she cannot write.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“Any place you love is the world to you.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“Everything is going to be fine in the end. If it's not fine, it's not the end.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“He made me see what Life is, and what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“Where there is no love, there is no understanding.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“Imagination is a quality that was given to man compensate him from what's not. The sense of humor was given to console him from what is.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“I don't want to earn my living, I want to live.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“Genius lasts longer than beauty.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“The best way to make children good is to make them happy.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that we should live.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“I'm too old to know everything.” 

- Oscar Wilde

“To get back one's youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies.” 

- Oscar Wilde