Oscar Wilde was born on October 16, 1854, in Dublin, Ireland. He first studied at Trinity College and then later moved to Magdalen College at Oxford.
He is famous for his role as an Irish playwright and author. Some of his most famous works include The Picture of Dorian Gray and the novel, The Importance of Being Earnest. His work has been characterized by its acerbic wit and criticism of society’s ills in morality and culture. Oscar Wilde died on November 30, 1900, in Paris.
These are some of the best Oscar Wilde quotes that might inspire you to live your life with more passion
“Women are made to be loved, not understood.”
“Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.”
“There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.”
“It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”
“Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.”
“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.”
“When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.”
“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
“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?”
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
“Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.”
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist. That is all.”
“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.”
“A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.”
“Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”
“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
“Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.”
“No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.”
“The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.”
“Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.”
“I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.”
“I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.”
“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!”
“My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.”
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”
“Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.”
“A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.”
“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”
“One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.”
“The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.”
“One can survive everything nowadays except death.”
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
“With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?”
“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life”
“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”
“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.”
“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go”
“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”
“The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.”
“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.”
“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”
“Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.”
“Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.”
“To define is to limit.”
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
“ It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”
“I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.”
“Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.”
“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”
“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”
“Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.”
“A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”
“Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.”
“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”
“Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.”
“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”
“Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.”
“It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.”
“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
“When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.”
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”
“The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.”
“Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
“I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”
“Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.”
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
“True friends stab you in the front.”
“Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.”
“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.”
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.”
“Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.”
“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.”
“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”
“Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.”
“Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success.”
“Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.”
“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
“A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.”
“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
“Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.”
“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
“The heart was made to be broken.”
“I have nothing to declare except my genius.”
“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
“I am not young enough to know everything.”
“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”
“No good deed goes unpunished.”
“The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.”
“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.”
“I can resist everything except temptation.”
“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
“A good friend will always stab you in the front.”
“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.”
“The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.”
“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
“I can resist anything except temptation.”
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.”
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.”
“There is no sin except stupidity.”
“Only the shallow know themselves.”
