I am a huge fan of this author. I fell in love with his way of writing in Uni, and that love has never left my side.
As an amazing contributor to English literature he is, I have decided to put together the best Oscar Wilde quotes, that are meaningful and could be good for every point of your life. Having that in mind, I have made a collection of the best Oscar Wilde quotes that I could find online.
Many of his quotes will make you question your life path. Others will give you an explanation of the emotional state you currently find yourself in. And some will make you smile.
It won’t be this crazy emotional roller-coaster, but on the contrary, it will serve as a great source of inspiration.
Hint: the quotes that don’t have a defined source are from Wilde’s comments, essays, etc.
20 Most Amazing And Inspiring Oscar Wilde Quotes
1. “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” ― Oscar Wilde (De Profundis)
2. “It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.” ― Oscar Wilde
3. “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Soul of Man Under Socialism)
4. “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well. If it is worth having, it is worth waiting for. If it is worth attaining, it is worth fighting for. If it is worth experiencing, it is worth putting aside time for.” ― Oscar Wilde
5. “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” ― Oscar Wilde
6. “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 warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.” ― Oscar Wilde (the Epigrams of Oscar Wilde)
7. “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Happy Prince and Other Stories)
8. ”Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde)
9. “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 Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde)
10. “The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.” ― Oscar Wilde (An Ideal Husband)
11. “When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Soul of Man Under Socialism)
12. “Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.” ― Oscar Wilde (Epigrams of Oscar Wilde)
13. “You can never be overdressed or overeducated.” ― Oscar Wilde
14. “Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Soul of Man Under Socialism)
15. “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
16. “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
17. “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 Woman of No Importance)
18. “If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.” ― Oscar Wilde (Epigrams of Oscar Wilde)
19. “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” ― Oscar Wilde
20. “I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.” ― Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde Quotes About Human Relations
1. “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
2. “Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Critic as Artist )
3. “Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
4. “As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
5. “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell the truth.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Critic as Artist )
6. “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” ― Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere’s Fan)
7. “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
8. “It’s beauty that captures your attention. Personality which captures your heart.” ― Oscar Wilde
9. “There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
10. “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Soul of a Man Under Socialism)
11. “Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.” ― Oscar Wilde (A Woman of no Importance)
12. “I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
13. “I like men who have a future and women who have a past.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
14. “Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.” ― Oscar Wilde
15. “Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.” ― Oscar Wilde
16. “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” ― Oscar Wilde
17. “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
18. “Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality” ― Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere’s Fan)
19. “Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.” ― Oscar Wilde (An Ideal Husband)
20. “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much” ― Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde Quotes About Love And Emotions
1. “We women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
2. “Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, 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 colour 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 (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
3. “You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
4. “She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. ” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
5. “Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.” ― Oscar Wilde (Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories)
6. “The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
7. “Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.” ― Oscar Wilde
8. “A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
9. “I really don’t see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
10. “An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant as the case may be.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Importance of being Earnest)
See also: 160 Unexpected Falling In Love Quotes To Give You Hope
My Favorite Quotes From The Picture Of Dorian Grey
1. “The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.” ― Oscar Wilde
2. “If I had read all this in a book, Harry, I think I would have wept over it. Somehow, now that it has happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears.” ― Oscar Wilde
3. “We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.”
4. “An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.” ― Oscar Wilde
5.“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” ― Oscar Wilde
6. “There is something of a child about her. Her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when I told her what I thought of her performance, and she seemed quite unconscious of her power.” ― Oscar Wilde
7. “Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.”― Oscar Wilde
8.“Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I am going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything that is good in me.”― Oscar Wilde
9.“Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.”― Oscar Wilde
10. “You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.” ― Oscar Wilde
11. “She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. ” ― Oscar Wilde
12. “It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. 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
13. “But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.” ― Oscar Wilde
14. “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.” ― Oscar Wilde
15. “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
16. “They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about. ” ― Oscar Wilde
17. “People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.” ― Oscar Wilde
18. “I love acting. It is so much more real than life.” ― Oscar Wilde
19. “You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.” ― Oscar Wilde
20. “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
Short And Philosophical Oscar Wilde Quotes
1. “Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.” ― Oscar Wilde (An Ideal Husband)
2. “It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
3. “Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
4. “Man is many things, but he is not rational.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
5. “All art is quite useless.” ― Oscar Wilde (Preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray)
6. “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” ― Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere’s Fan)
7. “True friends stab you in the front.” ― Oscar Wilde
8. “A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.” ― Oscar Wilde
9. “The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.” ― Oscar Wilde (Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories)
10. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
11. “I can resist everything except temptation.” ― Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere’s Fan)
12. “Everything in moderation, including moderation.” ― Oscar Wilde
13. “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)
14. “Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.” ― Oscar Wilde
15. “Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
16. “Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.” ― Oscar Wilde (An Ideal Husband)
17. “Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.” ― Oscar Wilde
18. “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde
19. “Illusion is the first of all pleasures.” ― Oscar Wilde
20. “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” ― Oscar Wilde (An Ideal Husband)
21. “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” ― Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere’s Fan)
22. “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)
23. “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
24. “Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” ― Oscar Wilde
25. “Hearts are made to be broken.” ― Oscar Wilde (De Profundis)
26. “Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
27. “To define is to limit” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
28. “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
29. “Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.” ― Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
30. “Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.” ― Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere’s Fan)
Final Thoughts
I am happy that we share the passion for this widely known Classical English writer. Oscar Wilde has sure made some important points!
I would like to encourage you to discuss all of these quotes with your friends and family, especially the more philosophical ones, because they are a great way to spark a conversation.
And honestly, they sometimes come handy, even for Instagram captions. Have fun researching more about Oscar Wilde love quotes!
Read next: 130 Gratitude Affirmations To Make Your Life More Joyful
