Top 500 Oscar Wilde Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 6 of 10

251. “When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.”

— Oscar Wilde

252. “Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

254. “I know. In fact, I am never wrong.”

— Oscar Wilde

255. “I was wrong. God’s law is only Love.”

— Oscar Wilde

256. “The essence of thought, as the essence of life, is growth.”

— Oscar Wilde

257. “History is a lie commonly agreed upon.”

— Oscar Wilde

258. “All great ideas are dangerous.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

260. “Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”

— Oscar Wilde

Featured in: Romance Quotes

261. “Marriage is a long, dull meal with dessert served at the beginning.”

— Oscar Wilde

262. “The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.”

— Oscar Wilde

263. “Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling.”

— Oscar Wilde

264. “The curves of your lips rewrite history.”

— Oscar Wilde

Featured in: Romance Quotes

265. “There is no Mystery so great as Misery.”

— Oscar Wilde

266. “Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.”

— Oscar Wilde

267. “Life under a good government is rarely dramatic; life under a bad government is always so.”

— Oscar Wilde

268. “In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.”

— Oscar Wilde

269. “Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.”

— Oscar Wilde

270. “Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.”

— Oscar Wilde

271. “One should always be a little improbable.”

— Oscar Wilde

272. “Aestheticism is a search after the signs of the beautiful. It is the science of the beautiful through which men seek the correlation of the arts. It is, to speak more exactly, the search after the secret of life.”

— Oscar Wilde

273. “Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art.”

— Oscar Wilde

274. “There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth.”

— Oscar Wilde

275. “Music is the perfect type of art.”

— Oscar Wilde

276. “Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.”

— Oscar Wilde

277. “I am tired of myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else.”

— Oscar Wilde

278. “Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.”

— Oscar Wilde

279. “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

280. “The ugly can be beautiful. The pretty, never.”

— Oscar Wilde

281. “When bankers get together they talk about art. When artists get together, they talk about money.”

— Oscar Wilde

282. “A man’s very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.”

— Oscar Wilde

283. “The best way to make children good is to make them happy.”

— Oscar Wilde

284. “A burnt child loves the fire.”

— Oscar Wilde

285. “If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.”

— Oscar Wilde

286. “In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor.”

— Oscar Wilde

Featured in: Strong Quotes

287. “He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.”

— Oscar Wilde

288. “Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.”

— Oscar Wilde

289. “Extravagance is the luxury of the poor; penury is the luxury of the rich.”

— Oscar Wilde

290. “To be good is to be in harmony with oneself. Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.”

— Oscar Wilde

291. “The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future.”

— Oscar Wilde

292. “Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.”

— Oscar Wilde

293. “I was very much disappointed in the Atlantic Ocean.”

— Oscar Wilde

294. “The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water.”

— Oscar Wilde

295. “Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.”

— Oscar Wilde

296. “To become a spectator of one’s own life is to escape the suffering of life.”

— Oscar Wilde

297. “Circumstances should never alter principles!”

— Oscar Wilde

298. “One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.”

— Oscar Wilde

299. “To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.”

— Oscar Wilde

300. “The man who says his wife can’t take a joke, forgets that she took him.”

— Oscar Wilde