Discover a collection of 150 insightful and witty Oscar Wilde quotes that offer profound observations on life, love, society, friendship, and art.
Oscar Wilde, the iconic Irish playwright, novelist, and poet, is celebrated as one of the most brilliant literary figures of the late 19th century. Known for his razor–sharp wit and flamboyant personality, he left an indelible mark on the literary world with his unique blend of satire and insight.
His works continue to captivate us to this day, while his words have become timeless gems of wisdom. In this article, our collection of Oscar Wilde quotes encapsulating his keen observations on society, love, art, and life.
Whether you seek inspiration, amusement, or a fresh perspective on life, his wisdom has the power to captivate and provoke thought. So, take a moment to immerse yourself in the brilliance of his words, as they unveil profound truths and challenge societal norms.
Get ready to be entertained, enlightened, and inspired as we unravel the wisdom encapsulated in Oscar Wilde quotes.
Oscar Wilde famous quotes
Discover the wit and wisdom with our top ten famous Oscar Wilde quotes that will inspire and entertain.
It’s beauty that captures your attention. personality which captures your heart.
Oscar Wilde
Be yourself; everyone else is taken.
Oscar Wilde
People may fail many times, but they become failures only when they begin to blame someone else. Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde
Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn’t there, and finding it.
Oscar Wilde
Selfishness is not living your life as you wish to live it. Selfishness is wanting others to live their lives as you wish them to.
Oscar Wilde
Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.
Oscar Wilde
Everyone may not be good, but there’s always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone shortly because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
Oscar Wilde
I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.
Oscar Wilde
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde love quotes
Love is like a war; easy to start but hard to end and you never know where it might take you.
Oscar Wilde
In love, it is better to know and be disappointed, than to not know and always wonder.
Oscar Wilde
They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.
Oscar Wilde
The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.
Oscar Wilde
Men as a rule love with their eyes, woman with their ears.
Oscar Wilde
When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve.
Oscar Wilde
Love is a misunderstanding between two fools.
Oscar Wilde
What a silly thing love is! It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything and it is always telling one things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true.
Oscar Wilde
Those whom the gods love grow young.
Oscar Wilde
The aim of love is to love. No more, no less.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde quotes about life
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
The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.
Oscar Wilde
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
Oscar Wilde
If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.
Oscar Wilde
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde
Life is the art of being well deceived, and to succeed, it must be habitual and uninterrupted.
Oscar Wilde
You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing.
Oscar Wilde
Life is too short to be in a hurry.
Oscar Wilde
The secret of life is in art.
Oscar Wilde
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.
Oscar Wilde
Inspirational Oscar Wilde quotes
Allow this section of Oscar Wilde quotes to ignite your imagination and challenge your perspective, leaving you captivated and inspired by his literary mastery.
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Oscar Wilde
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
Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working.
Oscar Wilde
It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.
Oscar Wilde
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.
Oscar Wilde
What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.
Oscar Wilde
If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.
Oscar Wilde
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde
An optimist will tell you the glass is half–full; the pessimist, half–empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be.
Oscar Wilde
The answers are all out there, we just need to ask the right questions.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde quotes funny
Indulge in the brilliance of Oscar Wilde quotes, where every line sparkles with wit, intelligence, and a touch of irony.
Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.
Oscar Wilde
God grant me the serenity to accept that people are ignorant, the courage to uphold the law when I’m hostile, and the wisdom to realize that murder is illegal.
Oscar Wilde
It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you place the blame.
Oscar Wilde
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man.
Oscar Wilde
A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
Oscar Wilde
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Oscar Wilde
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Oscar Wilde
I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll make an exception.
Oscar Wilde
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Oscar Wilde
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde quotes about books
With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?
Oscar Wilde
A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.
Oscar Wilde
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oscar Wilde
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde
The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations.
Oscar Wilde
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Oscar Wilde
I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five.
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
The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
Oscar Wilde
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde quotes on marriage
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.
Oscar Wilde
Loveless marriages are horrible. But there is one thing worse than an absolutely loveless marriage. A marriage in which there is love, but on one side only; faith, but on one side only; devotion, but on one side only, and in which of the two hearts one is sure to be broken.
Oscar Wilde
The man who says his wife can’t take a joke, forgets that she took him.
Oscar Wilde
Marriage is a long, dull meal with dessert served at the beginning.
Oscar Wilde
Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.
Oscar Wilde
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
Oscar Wilde
The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.
Oscar Wilde
Married men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.
Oscar Wilde
The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
Oscar Wilde
There is one thing worse than an absolutely loveless marriage: a marriage in which there is love, but on one side only.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde art quotes
What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.
Oscar Wilde
I treated Art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction.
Oscar Wilde
The good we get from art is not what we learn from it; it is what we become through it.
Oscar Wilde
Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.
Oscar Wilde
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want.
Oscar Wilde
It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.
Oscar Wilde
The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach.
Oscar Wilde
No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.
Oscar Wilde
The best art is about individualism, free self–expression and realising a unique, imaginative perspective– A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non–existent.
Oscar Wilde
Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde quotes on friendship
I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.
Oscar Wilde
Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.
Oscar Wilde
If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. But if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me, I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted so that I might share in what I was entitled to share. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation.
Oscar Wilde
An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.
Oscar Wilde
Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.
Oscar Wilde
A good friend will always stab you in the front.
Oscar Wilde
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
Oscar Wilde
But what is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means? Anybody can say charming things and try to please and to flatter, but a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain. Indeed, if he is a really true friend he prefers it, for he knows that then he is doing good.
Oscar Wilde
True friends stab you in the front.
Oscar Wilde
Friendship never forgets. That is the wonderful thing about it.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde quotes on death
And now, I am dying beyond my means.
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
Some things are more precious because they don’t last long.
Oscar Wilde
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Oscar Wilde
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
Oscar Wilde
All trials are trials for one’s life, just as all sentences are sentences of death.
Oscar Wilde
We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim – objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.
Oscar Wilde
The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
Oscar Wilde
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
For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.
Oscar Wilde
Sarcastic Oscar Wilde quotes
Explore the brilliance Oscar Wilde quotes that blend humor, satire, and profound insight.
Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
Oscar Wilde
If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart.
Oscar Wilde
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
Oscar Wilde
Women are made to be loved, not understood.
Oscar Wilde
Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.
Oscar Wilde
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
Oscar Wilde
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Oscar Wilde
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
Oscar Wilde
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.
Oscar Wilde
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
Oscar Wilde quotes temptation
Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.
Oscar Wilde
The only thing I cannot resist is temptation.
Oscar Wilde
A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it.
Oscar Wilde
A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.
Oscar Wilde
I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.
Oscar Wilde
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
Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.
Oscar Wilde
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
I can resist everything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde quotes on happiness
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde
Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.
Oscar Wilde
To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
Oscar Wilde
Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.
Oscar Wilde
Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.
Oscar Wilde
When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.
Oscar Wilde
Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
Oscar Wilde
The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happy married life.
Oscar Wilde
Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart’s–blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty.
Oscar Wilde
What is beautiful is a joy for all seasons.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde quotes about romance
The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Oscar Wilde
Twenty years of romance makes a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage makes her something like a public building.
Oscar Wilde
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Oscar Wilde
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement. Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman. When one is in love one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always ends by deceiving others. This is what the world calls a romance.
Oscar Wilde
Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman.
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
Common sense is the enemy of romance. Leave us some unreality. Do not make us too offensively sane.
Oscar Wilde
Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.
Oscar Wilde
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. If ever I get married, I’ll certainly try to forget the fact.
Oscar Wilde
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
Oscar Wilde
Self love Oscar Wilde quotes
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde
To be in love is to surpass one’s self.
Oscar Wilde
One should never listen. To listen is a sign of indifference to one’s hearers.
Oscar Wilde
To be good is to be in harmony with oneself. Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.
Oscar Wilde
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Oscar Wilde
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Oscar Wilde
You are beautiful when you are happy.
Oscar Wilde
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
To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.
Oscar Wilde
I don’t want to earn my living, I want to live.
Oscar Wilde
If this section resonate with you, read also love yourself quotes and self–love quotes.
Final thoughts
Oscar Wilde quotes challenges societal norms, encourages self–expression, and invites us to question the status quo. They reminding us of the power of words to entertain, inspire, and provoke thought long after they were first spoken or written.
As we delve into the world of Oscar Wilde quotes, we are reminded of the beauty and power of language, and the transformative effect it can have on our lives. So let keep Wilde’s spirit lives on, encouraging us to find joy in the pursuit of truth and beauty.
May the enchanting world of Oscar Wilde quotes continue to captivate and inspire you. If you enjoy our collection, share the magic of his words with others, for their beauty multiplies when shared.
Thank you for indulging in the brilliance of Oscar Wilde quotes. Let these quotes serve as a sanctuary of wisdom and artistry, inviting us to explore the depths of our own thoughts and emotions.