43 Oscar Wilde Quotes To Inspire

Oscar Wilde, the master of wit and a connoisseur of the human condition, continues to enchant readers with his timeless observations on life, love, and society. His words, as sharp as they are insightful, offer a window into a mind that embraced both the beauty and absurdity of existence. In exploring Wilde's quotes, one finds not only profound inspiration but also a reflection of the enduring quirks and complexities that define the human experience. Dive into this collection of 43 thought-provoking Oscar Wilde quotes, and let his unique perspective inspire and challenge your own ways of thinking.

1. “America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself.” - Oscar Wilde

2. “She...can talk brillantly upon any subject provided she knows nothing about it.” - Oscar Wilde

3. “Hearts Live By Being Wounded” - Oscar Wilde

4. “The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.” - Oscar Wilde

5. “Oscar Wilde: "I wish I had said that." Whistler: "You will, Oscar; you will.” - James McNeill Whistler

6. “It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world” - Oscar Wilde

7. “It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.” - Oscar Wilde

8. “A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.” - Oscar Wilde

9. “Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.” - G.K. Chesterton

10. “Si no podéis disfrutar leyendo un libro repetidas veces, de nada sirve leerlo ni una sola vez.” - Oscar Wilde

11. “[On Oscar Wilde:]"If, with the literate, I amImpelled to try an epigram,I never seek to take the credit;We all assume that Oscar said it.[Life Magazine, June 2, 1927]” - Dorothy Parker

12. “I drink to separate my body from my soul.” - Oscar Wilde

13. “Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.” - Oscar Wilde

14. “When in Reading Gaol he told me that the warders in the dock had been gentle and kind, but the visit of the chaplain in his first prison began with these words:'Mr. Wilde, did you have morning prayers in your house?''I am sorry... I fear not.''You see where you are now!” - Charles Ricketts

15. “Those who pay their bills on time are soon forgotten. It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.” - Gyles Brandreth

16. “How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.""Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.""I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.” - Oscar Wilde

17. “Poor Aubrey: I hope he will get all right. He brought a strangely new personality to English art, and was a master in his way of fantastic grace, and the charm of the unreal. His muse had moods of terrible laughter. Behind his grotesques there seemed to lurk some curious philosophy…” - Oscar Wilde

18. “So with curious eyes and sick surmiseWe watched him day by day,And wondered if each one of usWould end the self-same way,For none can tell to what red HellHis sightless soul may stray.” - Oscar Wilde

19. “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” - Oscar Wilde

20. “A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. Our lives revolve in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man's life progresses. I have just learnt this, and much else with it, from Lord Goring. And I will not spoil your life for you, nor see you spoil it as a sacrifice to me, a useless sacrifice.” - Oscar Wilde

21. “Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.” - Oscar Wilde

22. “So he was queer, E.M. Forster. It wasn't his middle name (that would be 'Morgan'), but it was his orientation, his romping pleasure, his half-secret, his romantic passion. In the long-suppressed novel Maurice the title character blurts out his truth, 'I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.' It must have felt that way when Forster came of sexual age in the last years of the 19th century: seriously risky and dangerously blurt-able. The public cry had caught Wilde, exposed and arrested him, broken him in prison. He was one face of anxiety to Forster; his mother was another. As long as she lived (and they lived together until she died, when he was 66), he couldn't let her know.” - Michael Levenson

23. “Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.” - Oscar Wilde

24. “I'm a man of simple tastes. I'm always satisfied with the best.” - Oscar Wilde

25. “Now, I have always wanted to agree with Lady Bracknell that there is no earthly use for the upper and lower classes unless they set each other a good example. But I shouldn't pretend that the consensus itself was any of my concern. It was absurd and slightly despicable, in the first decade of Thatcher and Reagan, to hear former and actual radicals intone piously against 'the politics of confrontation.' I suppose that, if this collection has a point, it is the desire of one individual to see the idea of confrontation kept alive.” - Christopher Hitchens

26. “I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.” - Oscar Wilde

27. “I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity.” - Oscar Wilde

28. “As for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.” - Oscar Wilde

29. “The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.” - Oscar Wilde

30. “I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.” - Oscar Wilde

31. “You told me you had destroyed it." "I was wrong. It has destroyed me.” - Oscar Wilde

32. “He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.” - Oscar Wilde

33. “I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.” - E.M. Forster

34. “My Salome is a mystic the sister of Salammbô a Saint Thérèse who worships the moon.” - Oscar Wilde

35. “Some believe that as an icon the image of Oscar Wilde is too old and notorious--all right, not an icon, let him be our oriflamme.” - Lara Biyuts

36. “It is a consolation or a misfortune that the wrong kind of people are too often correct in their prognostications of the future; the far-seeing are also the foolish.” - Robbie Ross

37. “Yet ruled he not long, so great had been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his testing, for after the space of three years he died. And he who came after him ruled evilly.” - Oscar Wilde

38. “Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self pity. Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - ' It destroys everything around it, except itself '. Self pity will destroy relationships, it'll destroy anything that's good, it will fulfill all the prophecies it makes and leave only itself. And it's so simple to imagine that one is hard done by, and that things are unfair, and that one is underappreciated, and that if only one had had a chance at this, only one had had a chance at that, things would have gone better, you would be happier if only this, that one is unlucky. All those things. And some of them may well even be true. But, to pity oneself as a result of them is to do oneself an enormous disservice.I think it's one of things we find unattractive about the american culture, a culture which I find mostly, extremely attractive, and I like americans and I love being in america. But, just occasionally there will be some example of the absolutely ravening self pity that they are capable of, and you see it in their talk shows. It's an appalling spectacle, and it's so self destructive. I almost once wanted to publish a self help book saying 'How To Be Happy by Stephen Fry : Guaranteed success'. And people buy this huge book and it's all blank pages, and the first page would just say - ' Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself - And you will be happy '. Use the rest of the book to write down your interesting thoughts and drawings, and that's what the book would be, and it would be true. And it sounds like 'Oh that's so simple', because it's not simple to stop feeling sorry for yourself, it's bloody hard. Because we do feel sorry for ourselves, it's what Genesis is all about.” - Stephen Fry

39. “De Profundis by Oscar Wilde (this excerpt inspired my book, The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap. Wilde wrote it to his lover while in prison.)When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realizing what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody else – the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver – would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.” - Paulette Mahurin

40. “I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me, before.'A dream of form in days of thought:” - Oscar Wilde

41. “Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.” - Oscar Wilde

42. “... Likewise, Oscar Wilde asked an English journalist to look over 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' before publication: "Will you also look after my 'wills' and 'shalls' in proof. I am Celtic in my use of these words, not English." Wilde's novel upset virtually every code of late Victorian respectability, but he had to get his modal auxiliaries just right.” - Andrew Elfenbein

43. “Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.And falsehoods the truths of other people.Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.” - Oscar Wilde