113 Famous Oscar Wilde Quotes About Life and Love

Oscar Fingal O’Flaherty Wills Wilde, famously known as Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet. He was born on 16 October 1854) in Ireland, Dublin. He was an essayist and a playwright. He was famous for his spoof and witty writing style. Here are the most famous quotes and sayings by Oscar Wilde to inspire you to greatness.

24 “The Picture of Dorian Gray Quotes” by Oscar Wilde

Wilde worked on many writing styles and was admired as a playwright in London in the late ‘80s. In 1890, he got famous for his novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. Critics called it a sham, vulgar, indecent, unclean, and lacks morality, but Oscar was bold in his writings, and he believed that literature could be good or bad written, not moral or immoral. The novel is considered as classics in modern literature.

Let’s go through some of the famous statements from “The Picture of Dorian Gray”.

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
“To define is to limit.”
“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”
“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
“Some things are more precious because they don’t last long.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
“The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.”
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.”
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.”
“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”
“The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”
“You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”

18 Motivational and Witty Quotes on Life by Oscar Wilde

Life for Oscar is the rarest thing in the world. He believed that most of the people are just existing in this world and not living. He thought that life is not fair to anyone, and it is good for us that it is not.

“Never love anybody who treats you like you’re ordinary.”
“Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
“True friends stab you in the front.”
“Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.”
“It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
“I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”
“They’ve promised that dreams can come true – but forget to mention that nightmares are dreams too.”
“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
“There is no sin except stupidity.”
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”

23 Oscar Wilde Famous and Funny Quotes on Love

Oscar was a preacher of love. He believed that a person should never love someone who makes him feel ordinary. He thought love happens when you sense the chemistry between two souls, it has nothing to do with looks, clothes, or a fancy car. Love for him is the law of God. He takes a wit by saying that one should be always in love and that is the reason one should never marry.

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”
“Between men and women, there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”
“Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.”
“Who, being loved, is poor?”
“No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.”
“One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.”
“A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.”
“When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.”
“Hatred is blind, as well as love.”
“Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.”
“I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.”
“Those whom the god’s love grow young.”
“There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.”
“I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.”
“Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”
“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
“Between men and women, there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”
“It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”
“I love acting. It is so much more real than life.”
“They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.”
“There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.”
“Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.”

21 Inspirational Quotes by Oscar Wilde on Self-Love

Oscar thinks that the most romantic thing a person can do is to love himself. He believed that a person should be most interested in knowing himself and should spend some quality time with oneself. He further states that a person who gains the whole world but loses himself is in a loss.

“Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”
“Medievalism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its wild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its whipping with rods – Medievalism is real Christianity, and the medieval Christ is the real Christ.”
“Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.”
“In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you.”
“The mystery of this world is in the visible, not the invisible.”
“To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.”
“We are specially designed to appeal to a sense of humor.”
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
“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.”
“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.”
“A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is.”
“The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.”
“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
“A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.”
“Experience, the name men give to their mistakes.”
“Life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.”
“Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.”
“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.”
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
“In this world, there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

17 Top Quotes From “The Importance of Being Earnest”

The importance of being earnest, a trivial comedy for serious people, is a play by Oscar Wilde. It is a satire on societal norms. The play is full of witty statements and sarcasm in Victorian ways. The author deals the serious institution like marriage with great trivial.

Following are some of the humorous statements by Oscar Wilde in “The Importance of Being Earnest”

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”
“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
“If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.”
“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”
“I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.”
“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”
“I never change, except in my affections.”
“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.”
“Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.”
“To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.”
“I could deny it if I liked it. I could deny anything if I liked it.”
“Oh! I don’t think I would like to catch a sensible man. I shouldn’t know what to talk to him about.”
“Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.”
“I don’t like novels that end happily. They depress me so much”

10 Best Oscar Wilde Quotes Images in 2022

Check out this fantastic collection of Oscar Wilde quotes wallpapers below:

Oscar Wilde Quote about human nature

Oscar Wilde Quote about life and tragedy

Oscar Wilde Quote about life and world

Oscar Wilde Quote about life

Oscar Wilde Quote about love and hatred

Oscar Wilde Quote about love

Oscar Wilde Quote about Mistake

Oscar Wilde Quote about Self Love and Romance

Oscar Wilde Quote about woman and love

Oscar Wilde Death

Oscar Wilde, along with his happily married life and two children, has led a secret life with his homosexual boyfriend Lord Alfred Douglas profoundly known as Bosie. Douglas carries misfortune to him and brings a downfall for Oscar. Rumors about Oscar being homosexual were already circulating when an unfortunate incident happened. A misunderstanding resulted in Oscar’s imprisonment for two years. Wilde died in poverty when he was 46 and left this world, which according to him was a play with a bad cast.

Conclusion

Though Oscar’s life and literature are controversial to some, his vivid nature and sense of humor fascinate many. He took this worldly life very casually, and with his unapologetic statements, he left a deep mark in the history of timeless literature.

What are your views on Oscar’s Wilde quotes? Does his wittiness charm you? Let us know in the comment box below.