75 Oscar Wilde Quotes That Will Make You Smile

I really think that you will enjoy reading this collection of the very best Oscar Wilde Quotes.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish playwright, poet and novelist who was considered as one of the greatest literary figures of the late Victorian era.

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin and he was educated at Trinity College and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he became known for his sharp wit, humour and flamboyant personality.

After graduation, Oscar Wilde moved to London and began a successful career as a writer and socialite.

He is famously known for writing the novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray‘ and the play ‘The Importance of Being Ernest.

He was well known for his humorous outlook on life. There are many examples of this in the following Oscar Wilde Quotes.

 

Oscar Wilde Quotes

1. “You can never be overdressed or overeducated.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

2. “What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

3. “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

4. “I am not young enough to know everything.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

5. “Experience is merely the name men give to their mistakes.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

6. “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

7. “Life is too important to be taken seriously.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

8. “Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

9. “Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

Best Oscar Wilde Quotes on Love and Life

10. “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

11. “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

12. “We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

13. “Everything in moderation, including moderation.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

14. “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

15. “The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.” ― Oscar Wilde Quote

 

 

16. “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

 

17. “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

18. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

19. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

Famous Oscar Wilde Quotes

20. “I can resist everything except temptation.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

21. “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

22. “A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

23. “When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

24. “I have nothing to declare except my genius.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

25. “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

26. “Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

27. “Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

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

 

29. “The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

Oscar Wilde Quotations

30. “Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.” ― Oscar Wilde Quote

 

 

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

 

32. “There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

33. “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

34. “The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

35. “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

36. “The very essence of romance is uncertainty.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

37. “As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

38. “The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

39. “My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

Oscar Wilde Famous Quotes

40. “I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

41. “A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

42. “I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

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

 

44. “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

 

45. “Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.” ― Oscar Wilde Quote

 

 

46. “The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

47. “One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

48. “Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

49. “Women are made to be loved, not understood.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

Oscar Wilde Quotes About Life

50. “The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

51. “A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

52. “No man is rich enough to buy back his past.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

53. “Everything popular is wrong.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

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

 

 

55. “To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world. the most difficult and the most intellectual.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

56. “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

57. “A good friend will always stab you in the front.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

58. “Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

59. “A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

Very Best Oscar Wilde Quotes

60. “I like men who have a future and women who have a past.” ― Oscar Wilde Quote

 

 

61. “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

62. “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

 

63. “Hear no Evil, Speak No Evil – and you’ll never be invited to a party.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

64. “Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

65. “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

66. “Who, being loved, is poor?” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

67. “But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

68. “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

69. “With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

70. “I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

71. “No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

72. “I love acting. It is so much more real than life.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

73. “It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

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

 

75. “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” ― Oscar Wilde

 

 

I really hope that you enjoyed reading this wonderful collection of Oscar Wilde Quotes.

Oscar Wilde’s humour and wisdom have made many of his quotes both memorable and popular. From his funny one-liners to his more profound comments on life, art and love.

The above Oscar Wilde quotes continue to inspire and entertain people from all over the world.

His quotes remind us of the importance of being true to ourselves and also how we look at the world.

These Oscar Wilde quotes continue to be widely shared to this day, which is a great testament to the legacy of this great Irish writer.