Oscar Wilde Quotes

Irish poet, playwright, and aesthete (1854-1900)

Add quote

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish dramatist, essayist, novelist and poet.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pen Names: С.3.3. • Sebastian Melmoth

Birth Name: Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde

Alternative Names: Oscar O'Flahertie Wills Wilde • Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde • Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde • Oscar O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde

From Wikidata (CC0)

Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean.

I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.

When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I daresay, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one's life.

Time is a waste of money.

[E]verybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

The thoroughly well-informed man — that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.

Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.

Life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.

All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

If one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.