Oscar Fingal O’Fflahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s.
Oscar Wilde Quotes
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
—Oscar Wilde
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
—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
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
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
—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
Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.
—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
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
—Oscar Wilde
To define is to limit.
—Oscar Wilde
We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
—Oscar Wilde
A good friend will always stab you in the front.
—Oscar Wilde
Who, being loved, is poor?
—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
I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.
—Oscar Wilde
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
—Oscar Wilde
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
—Oscar Wilde
I am not young enough to know everything.
—Oscar Wilde
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
—Oscar Wilde
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.
—Oscar Wilde
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
—Oscar Wilde
The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
—Oscar Wilde
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
—Oscar Wilde
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
—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
With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?
—Oscar Wilde
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
—Oscar Wilde
Hearts are made to be broken.
—Oscar Wilde
Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
—Oscar Wilde