Oscar Wilde Quotes | His Famous, Witty Words on Love and Life

Oscar Wilde Quotes | His Famous, Witty Words on Love & Life

Oscar Wilde was not a person that would accept to go unnoticed. The works of this Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet made a lasting impression and the way he treated the topics of identity, love, and society would later influence many of the 20th century’s great writers.

Loving his humor and his discovering nature, we have collected these famous quotes by him. These witty words by Oscar Wilde have a range of subjects so broad that they manage to interest us even today, in our 21st century everyday lives. We’re sure you’ll agree and, sometimes, laugh.

Witty Oscar Wilde Quotes

Everything in moderation, including moderation. Oscar Wilde
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. 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

Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary. Oscar Wilde
There are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. Oscar Wilde
Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer. Oscar Wilde
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. Oscar Wilde
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities. Oscar Wilde
I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying. Oscar Wilde

I can resist anything except temptation. Oscar Wilde

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. Oscar Wilde
You can never be overdressed or overeducated. Oscar Wilde
The heart was made to be broken. Oscar Wilde
Punctuality is the thief of time. Oscar Wilde
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. 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
Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company. Oscar Wilde
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Oscar Wilde
Who, being loved, is poor? 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
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Oscar Wilde

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Oscar Wilde

Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping. Oscar Wilde
Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power. Oscar Wilde
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Life is too short to learn German. Oscar Wilde
Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood. Oscar Wilde
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. Oscar Wilde
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his. Oscar Wilde
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. Oscar Wilde
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Oscar Wilde

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. 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 good friend will always stab you in the front. 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
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. Oscar Wilde
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. Oscar Wilde

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious. Oscar Wilde
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. Oscar Wilde
To define is to limit. Oscar Wilde
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. Oscar Wilde
I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there. Oscar Wilde
A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction. Oscar Wilde
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. Oscar Wilde
I like men who have a future and women who have a past. Oscar Wilde

The very essence of romance is uncertainty. Oscar Wilde
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination. Oscar Wilde
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, The Picture of Dorian Gray
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Oscar Wilde
I can resist anything except temptation. Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. Oscar Wilde
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all. 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
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. Oscar Wilde
With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy? 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
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
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. Oscar Wilde
I am not young enough to know everything. Oscar Wilde
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. Oscar Wilde

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

Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success. Oscar Wilde
I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability. Oscar Wilde
We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell. Oscar Wilde
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. Oscar Wilde
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike. Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband
There is no sin except stupidity. Oscar Wilde
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. Oscar Wilde
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them. Oscar Wilde

Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary. Oscar Wilde

Smart Oscar Wilde Quotes

I don’t say we all ought to misbehave. But we ought to look as if we could. Oscar Wilde
The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. Oscar Wilde
Music makes one feel so romantic – at least it always gets on one’s nerves – which is the same thing nowadays. Oscar Wilde
One should always be in love. That’s the reason one should never marry. Oscar Wilde
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her. 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
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
Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative. Oscar Wilde
She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm. Oscar Wilde
I love to talk about nothing. It’s the only thing I know anything about. 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

Inspirational Oscar Wilde Quotes

What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? 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
I love acting. It is so much more real than life. Oscar Wilde
Everything popular is wrong. Oscar Wilde
I won’t tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world’s voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose! Oscar Wilde
No man is rich enough to buy back his past. Oscar Wilde
You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one. Oscar Wilde
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. Oscar Wilde
Illusion is the first of all pleasures. Oscar Wilde
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible…. Oscar Wilde
When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers. 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
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
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing. Oscar Wilde

You can never be overdressed or overeducated. Oscar Wilde.

Long Oscar Wilde Quotes

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
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace. Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost
Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words? Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly — that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion — these are the two things that govern us. Oscar Wilde
Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us. And yet, I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream—I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal—to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. 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. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. Oscar Wilde