Oscar Wilde was a man of many loves. Despite everything, he felt genuine affection towards his wife, Constance, who died suddenly in 1898. He loved his sons Cyril and Vyvyan. He loved the beautiful young men and women he drew into his circle, including his most famous lovers, Alfred Douglas and Robert Ross.
And then there was his writing: He published his very first collection of poems in 1881. As the years passed, his art expanded to include short stories, essays, plays, and novels, but it’s his wit that most often is remembered. This Irish genius was known for his quick humor and biting sarcasm — qualities that made him both famous and infamous during his lifetime. When he died young, at only 46 years old, he left behind what would become some of literature’s most famous quotes. Even his last words before his death in a hotel in Paris became iconic: “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes, or I do.” It seems fitting that Oscar Wilde’s last words would be so remarkable since he was such a master at speaking them. In his honor, we created a list of the best Oscar Wilde quotes, so you can also enjoy his most memorable one-liners!
This post may include affiliate links.
“Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.”
"You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear."
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. Women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What women like is to be a man’s last romance.”
“True contentment is not having everything, but in being satisfied with everything you have.”
“Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.”
“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”
“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.”
“The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.”
“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.”
“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.”
“The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart-hearts are made to be broken-but that it turns one’s heart to stone.”
“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.”
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
“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.”
“If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.”
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell the truth."
"The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."
"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
“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.”
“The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.”
“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.”
“If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.”
“She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.”
“They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.”
“Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches can not. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”
“Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.”
“I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.”
“Love is like a war; easy to start but hard to end and you never know where it might take you.”
“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
“Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.”
“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.”
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.”
“It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”
“They've promised that dreams can come true- but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.”
“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”
“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.”
“Don't be discouraged if your children reject your advice. Years later they will offer it to their own offspring.”
“A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.”
"I can never travel without my diary, one should always have something sensational to read on the train."
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
“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.”
“Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.”
“I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.”
“In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
“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.”
“After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”
“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.”
“There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.”
“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.”
“I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited.”
“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”
