Top 500 Oscar Wilde Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.”

— Oscar Wilde

402. “Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.”

— Oscar Wilde

403. “To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.”

— Oscar Wilde

404. “The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

406. “To be entirely free, and at the same time entirely dominated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life.”

— Oscar Wilde

407. “Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.”

— Oscar Wilde

408. “Tread Lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.”

— Oscar Wilde

409. “Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.”

— Oscar Wilde

410. “Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.”

— Oscar Wilde

411. “I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself. Sometimes I am so clever I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”

— Oscar Wilde

412. “The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.”

— Oscar Wilde

413. “The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence.”

— Oscar Wilde

414. “Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.”

— Oscar Wilde

415. “I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so.”

— Oscar Wilde

416. “It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institutions of private property.”

— Oscar Wilde

417. “After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”

— Oscar Wilde

418. “Progress in thought is the assertion of individualism against authority.”

— Oscar Wilde

419. “Art never expresses anything but itself.”

— Oscar Wilde

420. “I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.”

— Oscar Wilde

421. “There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.”

— Oscar Wilde

422. “The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.”

— Oscar Wilde

423. “Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune.”

— Oscar Wilde

424. “Misfortunes one can endure – they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one’s own faults – ah! – there is the sting of life.”

— Oscar Wilde

425. “Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.”

— Oscar Wilde

426. “Millionaire models are rare enough; but, by Jove, model millionaires are rarer still!”

— Oscar Wilde

427. “To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.”

— Oscar Wilde

428. “The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.”

— Oscar Wilde

429. “Men know life too early. Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.”

— Oscar Wilde

430. “Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.”

— Oscar Wilde

431. “People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.”

— Oscar Wilde

432. “It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously.”

— Oscar Wilde

433. “After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.”

— Oscar Wilde

434. “Finding the meaning of life is easy. Simply get a dictionary, go to the ‘L’ section, and find the word ‘life.’”

— Oscar Wilde

435. “Intuition is a strange instinct that tells a woman she is right, whether she is or not.”

— Oscar Wilde

436. “My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.”

— Oscar Wilde

437. “Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”

— Oscar Wilde

438. “Travel ennobles the spirit and does away with our prejudices.”

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

440. “A man who pays his bills on time is soon forgotten.”

— Oscar Wilde

441. “An egg is always an adventure; the next one may be different.”

— Oscar Wilde

442. “A daughter is a mother’s gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of herself. -Author Unknown As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.”

— Oscar Wilde

443. “Behind the perfection of a man’s style, must lie the passion of a man’s soul.”

— Oscar Wilde

444. “Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in its infinite mercy, sends them a fat missionary.”

— Oscar Wilde

445. “Genius is born-not paid.”

— Oscar Wilde

446. “I am afraid that we are beginning to be over-educated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching -that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to.”

— Oscar Wilde

447. “Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman.”

— Oscar Wilde

448. “Full frontal nudity is reserved for Adam and Eve!”

— Oscar Wilde

449. “Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart’s-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty.”

— Oscar Wilde

450. “No gentleman ever has any money.”

— Oscar Wilde