Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) was an Irish playwright, poet, novelist and wit, born in Dublin on 16 October 1854.
His defining works include his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and the plays Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).
Wilde led the aesthetic movement with a simple creed: art for art’s sake, beauty over dull duty, and a paradox sharp enough to turn every drawing-room rule upside down.
In this blog post, I’ve shared 69 Oscar Wilde Quotes on wit, life, love, art and society, every line verified against his published works. So, let’s begin.
14 Oscar Wilde Quotes on Wit & Being Earnest
I can resist everything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde
In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.
Oscar Wilde
To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
Oscar Wilde
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oscar Wilde
I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance.
Oscar Wilde
If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.
Oscar Wilde
Divorces are made in Heaven.
Oscar Wilde
Thirty-five is a very attractive age.
Oscar Wilde
The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.
Oscar Wilde
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
Oscar Wilde
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
Oscar Wilde
Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.
Oscar Wilde
Punctuality is the thief of time.
Oscar Wilde
Also Read: 37 Rumi Quotes on Love, Silence & Spirituality (Analyzed)
14 Oscar Wilde Quotes About Life & Experience
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
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
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
Oscar Wilde
The one charm of the past is that it is the past.
Oscar Wilde
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
Oscar Wilde
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Oscar Wilde
Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.
Oscar Wilde
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
Oscar Wilde
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
Oscar Wilde
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
Oscar Wilde
Also Read: 62 Khalil Gibran Quotes (Love, Life & Wisdom from The Prophet)
13 Oscar Wilde Quotes About Love & Romance
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.
Oscar Wilde
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Oscar Wilde
Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. Women have a more subtle instinct about things. What they like is to be a man’s last romance.
Oscar Wilde
All women become like their mothers: that is their tragedy. No man does: that is his.
Oscar Wilde
A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
Oscar Wilde
The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
Oscar Wilde
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
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
The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.
Oscar Wilde
Yet each man kills the thing he loves.
Oscar Wilde
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.
Oscar Wilde
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
Oscar Wilde
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
Oscar Wilde
Also Read: Top 40 Love Quotes That Will Melt Your Heart (Analyzed)
14 Oscar Wilde Quotes About Art, Books & 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 artist is the creator of beautiful things.
Oscar Wilde
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated.
Oscar Wilde
All art is quite useless.
Oscar Wilde
Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.
Oscar Wilde
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Oscar Wilde
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
Oscar Wilde
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
Oscar Wilde
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
Oscar Wilde
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
Oscar Wilde
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use reading it at all.
Oscar Wilde
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Oscar Wilde
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
Oscar Wilde
Also Read: 51 Pablo Neruda Quotes (Love, Life & Poetry from the Nobel Laureate)
14 Oscar Wilde Quotes About Society, Sin & Sorrow
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Oscar Wilde
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
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
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Oscar Wilde
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue.
Oscar Wilde
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wilde
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
Oscar Wilde
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at.
Oscar Wilde
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
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
Suffering is one very long moment.
Oscar Wilde
Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.
Oscar Wilde
Keep this page for a birthday card, a caption, or any day that needs a sharper line. Wilde’s real lesson is the one behind the laughter: live deliberately, speak beautifully, and never let the world make you tedious.
