Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet, Playwright)

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900,) fully Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, was an Irish playwright, poet, essayist, editor, and author of many witty epigrams. Wilde’s dazzling ascension to notoriety also included his tragic fall from grace.

Wilde was born in Dublin. His father was a successful surgeon and his mother, a writer and a literary host. Wilde was educated at Dublin’s Trinity College and Magdalen College-Oxford. After graduation, he moved to London to pursue a literary career, announcing, “I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous I’ll be notorious.”

Wilde’s output was diverse. The first volume of his poetry was published in 1881. He contributed to publications such as the Pall Mall Gazette, wrote fairy tales, and published a novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891.)

Wilde’s most exceptional talent was for writing plays, and he produced a string of extremely popular comedies including Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892,) Salome (1892,) An Ideal Husband (1895,) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895.)

Drama and tragedy stained Wilde’s private life. He married Constance Lloyd in 1884. Even when he loved his wife and adored his two sons, Wilde began an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of an aristocrat. This resulted in one of the most famous trials of the 19th century. Wilde lost a libel suit after being accused as a homosexual. The prosecution exposed many details of Wilde’s private life. He was arrested, tried for gross indecency, and sentenced to two years of hard labor.

When he got out of prison, he wrote his most celebrated poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898,) concerning inhumane prison conditions. With his reputation ruined, he wandered around France and Italy. His health declined rapidly, and he died penniless in a seedy Paris hotel at age 46.

Wilde is considered the world’s most fabulous wit ever. He was a brilliant conversationalist; anecdotes abound about his famous retorts. Once, when U.S. Customs asked him if he had anything to declare upon his arrival in New York, Wilde replied, “Nothing but my genius.”

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Oscar Wilde

Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on.
—Oscar Wilde

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
—Oscar Wilde

I do not approve of anything which tampers with natural ignorance.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: One liners, Ignorance

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Morality

Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Fashion

Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
—Oscar Wilde

Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life’s lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Time, Youth, Self-Discovery

There is no sin except stupidity.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Sin, Stupidity

Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Despair

The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Sickness, Disease

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 richness to life that nothing else can bring.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Feelings, Love, Heart, Life, Garden, Rich, War

One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox—the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Hunting

A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Truth

Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Conversation, Speakers, Tact

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Gossip, Popularity

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: America, Civilization

Formerly we used to canonize our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarize them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Legacy, Biography

The Book Of Life begins with a man and woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Life

How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Sadness

It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Journalism, Journalists

All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Thought

Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succeed there.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Politics

Nothing makes one so vain as being told one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Evangelism, Conscience

Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Murder, Mistakes

Children have a natural antipathy to books – handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Children

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Reality, Names, Identity

Things are in their essence what we choose to make them. A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.
—Oscar Wilde

The English public, as a mass, takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Public

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Clothing, Fashion

The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet’s dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Humankind, Humanity

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