Top 500 Oscar Wilde Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.”

— Oscar Wilde

302. “Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness.”

— Oscar Wilde

303. “It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”

— Oscar Wilde

304. “One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.”

— Oscar Wilde

305. “We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken.”

— Oscar Wilde

306. “The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

308. “A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.”

— Oscar Wilde

309. “Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

311. “A grapefruit is just a lemon that saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.”

— Oscar Wilde

312. “Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, and creeds follow one another like the withered leaves of Autumn; but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eternity.”

— Oscar Wilde

313. “Books are never finished, They are merely abandoned.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

315. “All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.”

— Oscar Wilde

316. “Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.”

— Oscar Wilde

317. “To look at a thing is very different from seeing it.”

— Oscar Wilde

318. “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

319. “Loveless marriages are horrible. But there is one thing worse than an absolutely loveless marriage. A marriage in which there is love, but on one side only; faith, but on one side only; devotion, but on one side only, and in which of the two hearts one is sure to be broken.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

322. “Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance.”

— Oscar Wilde

323. “Good intentions have been the ruin of the world. The only people who have achieved anything have been those who have had no intentions at all.”

— Oscar Wilde

324. “Whenever I’m in doubt, I ask myself, ‘What would Jesus do?’ And then I realize, Jesus got crucified, so maybe his decision-making isn’t all that great.”

— Oscar Wilde

325. “The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.”

— Oscar Wilde

326. “It is personalities not principles that move the age.”

— Oscar Wilde

327. “He made me see what Life is, and what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

329. “There can be nothing more frequent than an occasional drink.”

— Oscar Wilde

330. “They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.”

— Oscar Wilde

331. “I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”

— Oscar Wilde

332. “When both a speaker and an audience are confused, the speech is profound.”

— Oscar Wilde

333. “My philosophy? I’m always right and you are wrong.”

— Oscar Wilde

334. “Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.”

— Oscar Wilde

335. “The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?”

— Oscar Wilde

336. “Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

338. “Behind Joy and Laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow. Pain, unlike Pleasure, wears no mask.”

— Oscar Wilde

339. “I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.”

— Oscar Wilde

340. “Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.”

— Oscar Wilde

341. “The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.”

— Oscar Wilde

342. “If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture...”

— Oscar Wilde

343. “It is only through Art and through Art only that we can realize our perfection; Through Art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.”

— Oscar Wilde

344. “A burnt child loves the fire.”

— Oscar Wilde

345. “If we’re always guided by other people’s thoughts, what’s the point in having our own?”

— Oscar Wilde

346. “Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but is hardly suitable for delicate boys.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

348. “But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.”

— Oscar Wilde

349. “The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me.”

— Oscar Wilde

350. “I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five.”

— Oscar Wilde