120 Oscar Wilde Quotes on Life, Love & Being Yourself

In this post, we have put together for you the best Oscar Wilde quotes that we hope they will inspire you to live your life to the fullest without paying much attention to what others think of you.

Oscar Wilde Short Biography

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on 16 October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. He was an poet, dramatist and writer who became so famous thanks to his novels:‘The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)’ and ‘The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).’

Oscar Wilde defended the art for art’s sake as he was a spokesman for aestheticism in the late 19th century. He had impressive conversational skills and beautiful writing style that made him receieve great praise from his followers.

Oscar was threatened with imprisonment because of his calls for homosexuality sodomy on 25 May 1895. Instead of escaping to France, he decided to stay and face trial.

The court convicted him and imprisoned him, where he served his sentence between London’s Pentonville Prison and London’s Reading Goal before his release in 1897.

Oscar has suffered a lot in the prison because of hard labor, and this made his health deteriorate significantly. After his release, he moved to France where he spent his last 3 years composing his last work ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’.

He died at the age of 46, on November 30, 1900, and the French authorities buried him in France.

15 Best Oscar Wilde Quotes

“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

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

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

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

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

Live life with no excuses and travel with no regret.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

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

I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

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

85 Inspiring Oscar Wilde Quotes About Life, Imagination, and Books

First Part

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. And to have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.” –Oscar Wilde

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

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

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

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

The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.

True friends stab you in the front.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

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

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.

Second Part

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

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

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.

I can resist everything except temptation.

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

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.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

Third Part

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” – Oscar Wilde

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

Some things are more precious because they don’t last long.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

Fourth Part

“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

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

There is no sin except stupidity.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.

Fifth Part

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

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

I like men who have a future and women who have a past.

20 Best Oscar Wilde Quotes on Love, Marriage & Relationships

Fisrt Part

“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

Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.

Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.

The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.

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

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

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

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

Second Part

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

Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious – both are disappointed.

Hearts are made to be broken.

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

Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.

Latest Thoughts About Oscar Wilde Quotes

We really hope that you have gotten more inspiration from this wonderful collection of Oscar Wilde Quotes.

Because of his humour and wisdom, Oscar wilde Quotes remain so popular till nowadays. He was best known for his funny one-liners and his deep insights on life, love and art.

The above Oscar Wilde quotes continue to offer inspiration and fun for many people around the world. His words serve as a reminder of the importance of humour, the power of embracing ourselves and the beauty of the human spirit.

His words of inspiration continue to dominate the social media platforms through sharing, and this makes his great legacy endures throughout the fauture.

Further reading:

• Oscar Wilde Biography – Wilde Online
• Oscar Wilde’s Stirring Love Letters to Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas – Brain Pickings
• 7 facts you (probably) didn’t know about Oscar Wilde – History Extra
• 15 Things You May Not Know About Oscar Wilde – Culture Trip