Top 500 Oscar Wilde Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 10

51. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”

— Oscar Wilde

52. “Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.”

— Oscar Wilde

53. “The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”

— Oscar Wilde

54. “A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.”

— Oscar Wilde

55. “I beg your pardon, I didn’t recognise you – I’ve changed a lot.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

57. “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

58. “Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.”

— Oscar Wilde

59. “A passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

62. “A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.”

— Oscar Wilde

63. “Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.”

— Oscar Wilde

64. “There are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.”

— Oscar Wilde

65. “If you don’t get everything you want, think of the things you don’t get that you don’t want.”

— Oscar Wilde

66. “Every woman is a rebel.”

— Oscar Wilde

67. “For one moment our lives met, our souls touched.”

— Oscar Wilde

68. “Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

71. “Man is many things, but he is not rational.”

— Oscar Wilde

72. “The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”

— Oscar Wilde

73. “Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”

— Oscar Wilde

74. “To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”

— Oscar Wilde

75. “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

76. “It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.”

— Oscar Wilde

77. “I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.”

— Oscar Wilde

78. “Arguments are to be avoided, they are always vulgar and often convincing.”

— Oscar Wilde

79. “I like talking to a brick wall- it’s the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!”

— Oscar Wilde

80. “When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.”

— Oscar Wilde

81. “I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”

— Oscar Wilde

82. “Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.”

— Oscar Wilde

83. “And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.”

— Oscar Wilde

84. “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

86. “He wanted to be where no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.”

— Oscar Wilde

87. “I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do – the day after.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

89. “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

— Oscar Wilde

90. “The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart – hearts are made to be broken – but that it turns one’s heart to stone.”

— Oscar Wilde

91. “When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

93. “This wallpaper is dreadful, one of us will have to go.”

— Oscar Wilde

94. “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

95. “The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.”

— Oscar Wilde

96. “In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.”

— Oscar Wilde

97. “Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed.”

— Oscar Wilde

98. “Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

— Oscar Wilde

99. “One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.”

— Oscar Wilde

100. “Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.”

— Oscar Wilde