A revolutionary personality of ‘Aestheticism period,’ Oscar Wilde was a famous Irish playwright and poet and a gem who gave literature some of his beautiful works in the form of Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest.
He incorporated themes of duplicity, beauty, wisdom, and importantly the tool he is popular for, wit and humor. However, his life was not as lively as he seems to be, Wilde died at the age of 46, living his exuberant legacy, which is followed for over a century.
A believer of ‘art for art’s sake,’ Oscar is one of those writers who consumed aestheticism and portrayed the idea in his writings, that art should exist for its beauty rather than any other motive. Besides his literary works, he has generated a flamboyant identity, which can be seen in our collection of ‘Oscar Wilde Quotes on Inspiration, Art, and Identity.’
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Oscar Wilde
I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
Oscar Wilde
The supreme object of life is to live. Few people live. It is true life only to realize one’s own perfection, to make one’s every dream a reality.
Oscar Wilde
My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist. It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn’t a dentist. It produces false impression.
Oscar Wilde
To define is to limit.
Oscar Wilde
I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.
Oscar Wilde
Always! That is the dreadful word … it is a meaningless word, too.
Oscar Wilde
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
Oscar Wilde
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
Oscar Wilde
Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.
Oscar Wilde
Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
Oscar Wilde
The best way to enjoy your job is to imagine yourself without one.
Oscar Wilde
There is no feeling more comforting and consoling than knowing you are right next to the one you love.
Oscar Wilde
I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.
Oscar Wilde
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.
Oscar Wilde
I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.
Oscar Wilde
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
Oscar Wilde
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Oscar Wilde
Extravagance is the luxury of the poor; penury is the luxury of the rich.
Oscar Wilde
When a golden girl can win Prayer from out the lips of sin, When the barren almond bears, And a little child gives away its tears, Then shall all the house be still And peace come to Canterville.
Oscar Wilde
Rugby is a game for barbarians played by gentlemen. Football is a game for gentlemen played by barbarians.
Oscar Wilde
A kiss may ruin a human life.
Oscar Wilde
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
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
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
Oscar Wilde
The best revenge is to live well.
Oscar Wilde
Women are made to be loved, not understood.
Oscar Wilde
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.
Oscar Wilde
While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.
Oscar Wilde
After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.
Oscar Wilde
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Oscar Wilde
There can be nothing more frequent than an occasional drink.
Oscar Wilde
Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.
Oscar Wilde
Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.
Oscar Wilde
They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.
Oscar Wilde
Famous Oscar Wilde Quotes
A man with too many personalities, Oscar Wilde, was a renowned intellectual, writer, and a poet whose plays were mostly based on a theme of satirical comedy. He is one of those bold authors who mocked the hypocrisy of Victorian society and the masks worn by the Upper-Class people (wealthiest members of the community) and, of course, the famous London’s social hierarchy.
Living a humorous, courageous life with full of consummate wit and a controversial incident of infamous imprisonment for homosexuality, Oscar is preached for his excellent literary accomplishments.
Despite having an extravagant life, Oscar is known for the tragic circumstances of his death. Wilde was charged under the ‘Labouchere Amendment,’ i.e., for being homosexual. His outstanding literary works were used as evidence against him, though his wit remained as sharp as ever in his trials. Today for readers, we have collected some brilliant Famous Oscar Wilde Quotes to honor this late 18th-century literary genius.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
Oscar Wilde
You can never be overdressed or overeducated.
Oscar Wilde
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.
Oscar Wilde
I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.
Oscar Wilde
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
I can resist anything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
A good friend will always stab you in the front.
Oscar Wilde
I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
Oscar Wilde
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Oscar Wilde
Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Oscar Wilde
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde
I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde
With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?
Oscar Wilde
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
Oscar Wilde
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
Oscar Wilde
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Oscar Wilde
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oscar Wilde
The heart was made to be broken.
Oscar Wilde
I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
Oscar Wilde
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Oscar Wilde
Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
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
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oscar Wilde
The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
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
Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.
Oscar Wilde
You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.
Oscar Wilde
Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde
Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.
Oscar Wilde
Hearts are made to be broken.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde Quotes about Love, Life, and Wit
Widely renowned for his wit and flamboyance, Oscar Wilde is a prolific essayist, critic, and playwright of the Victorian period. In his lifetime, Oscar wrote nine plays, one novel and numerous essays, short stories, and poems and is warmly regarded for his excellent oratory and charismatic wit. Even over centuries, Oscar’s literary accomplishments cannot be measured in mere words.
An Irish literary genius lived an alternate reality too! While Oscar Wilde is famous for his courage and wit, his homosexual relationship with Alfred Douglas was no secret to the world. He has to go through trials and get imprisoned for having a love affair with a man, which was illegal under the law during the 18th century.
If you get enthralled with the thrilling literature of the Victorian age, then Oscar Wilde is a valuable gem to be remembered for his marvelous works. Check out the below-mentioned quotes to gain a fulfilling new perspective towards life.
The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Oscar Wilde
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success.
Oscar Wilde
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Oscar Wilde
The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.
Oscar Wilde
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Oscar Wilde
I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.
Oscar Wilde
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
Oscar Wilde
We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
Oscar Wilde
I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.
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
Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.
Oscar Wilde
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
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
Oscar Wilde
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
Oscar Wilde
Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.
Oscar Wilde
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
Oscar Wilde
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde
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
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde
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
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.
Oscar Wilde
The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.
Oscar Wilde
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Oscar Wilde
The only good thing to do with good advice is pass it on; it is never of any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde
Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
Oscar Wilde
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde
The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
Oscar Wilde
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde
It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.
Oscar Wilde
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
Oscar Wilde
Despite being one of the most fantastic comic writers in the history of literature and theatre, Oscar has fought in severe battles as a human being, a homosexual, and an artist, which he always faced strong heartedly. To honor this literary genius, we have collected some inspiring collection from his writings for our readers.