Oscar Wilde Quotes

Oscar Wild has written several books, which are the most important of all time. They also include some of the best Oscar Wilde Quotes and therefore are read by a lot of people.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
Oscar Wilde
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Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
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

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

To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
Oscar Wilde

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

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

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

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Oscar Wilde

Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Oscar Wilde

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde

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

Genius is born–not paid.
Oscar Wilde

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.
Oscar Wilde

I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Oscar Wilde

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Oscar Wilde

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

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
Oscar Wilde

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
Oscar Wilde

It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is fatal.
Oscar Wilde

Music makes one feel so romantic – at least it always gets on one’s nerves – which is the same thing nowadays.
Oscar Wilde

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

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

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde

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

We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.
Oscar Wilde

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

Wisdom comes with winters.
Oscar Wilde

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

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

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

One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
Oscar Wilde

I don’t play accurately-any one can play accurately- but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.
Oscar Wilde

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Oscar Wilde

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Oscar Wilde

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Oscar Wilde

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

Crying is the refuge of plain women, but the ruin of pretty ones.
Oscar Wilde

I can resist anything but temptation.
Oscar Wilde

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

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde

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

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde

Only the shallow know themselves.
Oscar Wilde

But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
…Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.
Oscar Wilde

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

Do not speak ill of society, Algie. Only people who can’t get in do that.
Oscar Wilde

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde

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

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

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
Oscar Wilde

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
Oscar Wilde

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.
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.
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