Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900) 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.
Born in Dublin, Ireland, Wilde’s father was a successful surgeon and his mother a writer and literary host. Wilde was educated at Dublin’s Trinity College and Oxford’s Magdalen College. 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. A 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 greatest 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 greatest poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898,) concerning inhumane prison conditions. With his reputation ruined, he wandered around France and Italy. Wilde’s health declined rapidly and he died penniless in a seedy Paris hotel at age 46.
Wilde is considered the world’s greatest wit ever. He was a brilliant conversationalist; anecdotes abound about his well-known retorts. Once, when US Customs asked him if he had anything to declare upon his arrival in New York, Wilde replied, “Nothing but my genius.”
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Self-denial is simply a method by which man arrests his progress.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Self-Discovery
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
Topics: Sorrow
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
—Oscar Wilde
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
—Oscar Wilde
In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Questions, One liners
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
—Oscar Wilde
Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Happiness
Looking good and dressing well is a necessity. Having a purpose in life is not.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Purpose
One should always be a little improbable.
—Oscar Wilde
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: People, Character
Lying, a telling of beautiful untrue things, this is the proper aim of art.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Art
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
—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
Topics: Change, Future, Reflection, Sin, Perspective, Past
Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
—Oscar Wilde
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
Topics: Sin, Self-Control
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Thought, Thinking
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
Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
—Oscar Wilde
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Charity
One should never listen. To listen is a sign of indifference to one’s hearers.
—Oscar Wilde
When a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him.
—Oscar Wilde
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
—Oscar Wilde
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Living
Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties, Motivation, Progress
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Failure, One liners, Ambition
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
—Oscar Wilde
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
—Oscar Wilde
What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.
—Oscar Wilde
True friends stab you in the front.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Friendship, One liners
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Honesty
One should absorb the color of life, but one should never remember its details.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Life
Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Religion
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Friendship, Laughter, Beginning
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst; the last is a real tragedy!
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Success, Happiness, Adversity, Life, Money, Age, Desires, Tragedy
To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Inaction
Only good questions deserve good answers.
—Oscar Wilde
Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Work, Society
Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.
—Oscar Wilde
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Work, Genius, Talent
Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Marriage
When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it is.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Money
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Living, Life, Nature
‘Know thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, ‘Be thyself’ shall be written.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Man
The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Thought, Belief, Knowledge, Aging
All great ideas are dangerous.
—Oscar Wilde
Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Family
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Integrity, Selfishness
Man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is.
—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
Topics: Risk, Common Sense
Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Power
Who, being loved, is poor?
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Poverty, Love
When the gods choose to punish us, they merely answer our prayers.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Prayer
Everything popular is wrong.
—Oscar Wilde
The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Work, Jobs
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
The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Events
Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Belief, Determination
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Wealth, Past and Present
A sentimentalist is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of a single thing.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Values
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
—Oscar Wilde
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Happiness, Feelings, Insults
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Danger, Ideas
Life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Life
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Attitude, Goals, Aspirations, Ideals, Stars
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Art
I can resist everything except temptation.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Difficulty
All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.
—Oscar Wilde
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Live
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Self-Discovery, Honesty, Caution
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Acceptance
Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.
—Oscar Wilde
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Money
Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and with his environment.
—Oscar Wilde
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving oneself; and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Love
The one charm of the past is that it is the past.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Past, Past and Present
All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: One liners
People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it’s impossible to count them accurately.
—Oscar Wilde
My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don’t know anything at all.
—Oscar Wilde
Skepticism is the beginning of Faith.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Faith, Doubt, Skepticism
A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
—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
Topics: Education, Society
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Forgiveness, One liners, Love
The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Hypocrisy, Ideas
One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell that would tell anything.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Age, Women
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
—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
Topics: Desire, Desires, Tragedy
The only form of lying that is absolutely beyond reproach is lying for its own sake.
—Oscar Wilde
The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Critics, Criticism
The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
—Oscar Wilde
The fact is, you have fallen lately, Cecily, into a bad habit of thinking for yourself. You should give it up. It is not quite womanly… men don’t like it.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Men, Men & Women, Women
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
Topics: Hypocrisy, Deception
Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Genius
I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.
—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
Topics: Failure, Self-Discovery
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Optimism
If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Truth
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Praise, Men
The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Money
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Satisfaction, Excellence, Best, Taste
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
—Oscar Wilde
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Simplicity, Simple Living
To be premature is to be perfect.
—Oscar Wilde
Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Experience
An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Friendship, Friends and Friendship
Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
—Oscar Wilde
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Thought, Truth
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Age, Aging
Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.
—Oscar Wilde
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Conscience
Experience, the name men give to their mistakes.
—Oscar Wilde
The supreme vice is shallowness.
—Oscar Wilde
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: People, Virtues
We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Experience
I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house-tops.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Integrity
Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
—Oscar Wilde
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Evil
I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Mistakes, Family
Only the shallow know themselves.
—Oscar Wilde
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Thought, Truth
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