120 Oscar Wilde Quotes Celebrating Life and Love

“I have the simplest of tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” – Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde is known for the novel ‘The Pictures of Dorian Gray’ which is also one of the most controversial novels as British readers considered it as immoral. Let’s dive into the famous quotes by this famous Irish poet. Presenting you famous Oscar Wilde Quotes and Sayings:

Oscar Wilde is an Irish poet and playwright. He was born in Dublin, Ireland. His mother was a successful poet and his father was an eye surgeon. He won the Newdigate Prize in college for his poem Ravenna. After graduating from Magdalen College, Wilde moved to London to pursue his career in literature. He used to have long hair and dressed strangely in London. Initially, his work was not so successful. He also went to England for lectures. He returned from England with a play which was again a failure.

So, he went back to England for lecture tours and encountered Lloyd whom he married. His work started gaining appreciation. The audience started accepting his work. He had two sons considering whom he also wrote three children’s plays – The Devoted Friend, The Happy Prince and The Selfish Giant.

Oscar worked as an editor that secured his family financially. He then left the magazines to be a playwright. Wilde published the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray which received admiration as well as critics. It was followed by many of his great works. His play ‘A Woman of No Importance’ was a great success. But all this publicity and fame didn’t last long. Oscar Wilde was prisoned for two years for homosexuality which was considered a crime then. He spent the rest of his life wandering England with his friends staying in the hotels of Paris. At the age of 46, he died in a hotel in Paris due to ear infection.

So, here’s the one for a wittiest Irish poet. Enjoy famous Oscar Wilde Quotes and Sayings.

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Oscar Wilde Quotes

“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.” – Oscar Wilde

“The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.” – Oscar Wilde

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”- Oscar Wilde

“Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.”- Oscar Wilde

“A good friend will always stab you in the front.” – Oscar Wilde

“I’m a man of simple tastes. I’m always satisfied with the best.” – 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

“No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.” – Oscar Wilde

“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.” – Oscar Wilde

“My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.” – Oscar Wilde

“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.”- Oscar Wilde

“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” – 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

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” – Oscar Wilde

“One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.” – Oscar Wilde

Famous Oscar Wilde Quotes

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

“Live life with no excuses and travel with no regret.” – Oscar Wilde

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

“It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.” – Oscar Wilde

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell the truth.” – Oscar Wilde

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” – Oscar Wilde

“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” – Oscar Wilde

“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.” – Oscar Wilde

“The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.” – 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

“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” – Oscar Wilde

“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.” – Oscar Wilde

“A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.” – Oscar Wilde

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden where the flowers are dead.” – Oscar Wilde

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.” – Oscar Wilde

“One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.” – Oscar Wilde

“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

“Some things are more precious because they don’t last long.” – Oscar Wilde

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde

“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.” – Oscar Wilde

“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.” – Oscar Wilde

“I am not young enough to know everything.” – Oscar Wilde

“The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.” – Oscar Wilde

“There is no sin except stupidity.” – Oscar Wilde

“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

“I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.” – 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 am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” – Oscar Wilde

“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.” – Oscar Wilde

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” – Oscar Wilde

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Best Oscar Wilde Quotes About Life

“Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.” – Oscar Wilde

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – 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

“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

“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” – Oscar Wilde

“The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.” – Oscar Wilde

“A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.” – Oscar Wilde

“Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.” – Oscar Wilde

“A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.” – Oscar Wilde

“True friends stab you in the front.” – Oscar Wilde

“I can never travel without my diary, one should always have something sensational to read on the train.” – 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

“I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.” – Oscar Wilde

“I can resist everything except temptation.” – Oscar Wilde

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.” – Oscar Wilde

“Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.” – Oscar Wilde

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde

“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.” – Oscar Wilde

“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

“When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.” – Oscar Wilde

“They’ve promised that dreams can come true – but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.” – Oscar Wilde

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” – Oscar Wilde

“The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.” – Oscar Wilde

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” – Oscar Wilde

“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.” – Oscar Wilde

“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.” – Oscar Wilde

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.” – Oscar Wilde

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” – Oscar Wilde

“A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.” – Oscar Wilde

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” – Oscar Wilde

“Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.” – Oscar Wilde

“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” – Oscar Wilde

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.” – Oscar Wilde

“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” – Oscar Wilde

“There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.” – Oscar Wilde

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.” – Oscar Wilde

“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.” – Oscar Wilde

“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” – Oscar Wilde

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.” – Oscar Wilde

“It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.” – Oscar Wilde

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.” – Oscar Wilde

“Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.” – Oscar Wilde

“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” – Oscar Wilde

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” – Oscar Wilde

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – 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

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” – Oscar Wilde

“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.” – Oscar Wilde

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Oscar Wilde Quotes on Love & Relationship

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

“A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.” – Oscar Wilde

“The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.” – Oscar Wilde

“Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.” – Oscar Wilde

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” – Oscar Wilde

“There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.” – Oscar Wilde

“Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.” – Oscar Wilde

“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.” – Oscar Wilde

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” – Oscar Wilde

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.” – Oscar Wilde

“When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.” – Oscar Wilde

“Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.” – Oscar Wilde

“As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.” – Oscar Wilde

“I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses.” – Oscar Wilde

“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.” – Oscar Wilde

“Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.” – Oscar Wilde

“Hearts are made to be broken.” – Oscar Wilde

“The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.” – Oscar Wilde

“Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious – both are disappointed.” – Oscar Wilde

“Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.” – Oscar Wilde

“One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.” – 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

Final Words

Oscar Wilde is an author who has written a small number of poems and plays but still has contributed to all forms of writing in literature. We hope you have enjoyed these famous Oscar Wilde Quotes and Sayings and look upon him as a person who creates his own style.

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