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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Oscar Wilde Quotes

Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in its infinite mercy, sends them a fat missionary.

– Oscar Wilde

There is the same world for all of us, and good and evil, sin and innocence, go through it hand in hand.

– Oscar Wilde

Lady Windermere’s Fan, Lady Windermere, Act 4.

If we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it.

– Oscar Wilde

An Ideal Husband, Lord Goring, Act 4.

You women live by your emotions and for them. You have no philosophy of life.

– Oscar Wilde

A Woman of No Importance, Lord Illingworth, Act 4.

I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.

– Oscar Wilde

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

– Oscar Wilde

The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell, Act 3.

The man who sees both sides of a question, is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.

– Oscar Wilde

The Critic as Artist

All trials are trials of one’s life, just as all sentences are sentences of death.

– Oscar Wilde

I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.

– Oscar Wilde

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

– Oscar Wilde

The Decay of Lying

Lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance –
And must I lose a soul’s inheritance.

– Oscar Wilde

Three addresses always inspire confidence, even in tradesmen.

– Oscar Wilde

The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell, Act 3.

Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they’re better.

– Oscar Wilde

Lady Windermere’s Fan, Mrs. Erlynne, Act 4.

A man’s life is of more value than a woman’s. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions.

– Oscar Wilde

An Ideal Husband, Lord Goring, Act 4.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

– Oscar Wilde

A Woman of No Importance, Lord Illingworth, Act 4.

Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

– Oscar Wilde

The Soul of Man Under Socialism

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

– Oscar Wilde

The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell, Act 3.

There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.

– Oscar Wilde

Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young

But love is not fashionable any more, the poets killed it. They wrote so much about it that nobody believed them.

– Oscar Wilde

The Remarkable Rocket

Tread Lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.

– Oscar Wilde

I am disgraced: he is not. That is all. It is the usual history of a man and a woman as it usually happens, as it always happens. And the ending is the ordinary ending. The woman suffers. The man goes free.

– Oscar Wilde

A Woman of No Importance, Mrs. Arbuthnot, Act 4.

I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.

– Oscar Wilde

Lady Windermere’s Fan, Mrs. Erlynne, Act 4.

The vilest deeds like poison-weeds
Bloom well in prison-air;
It is only what is good in Man
That wanders and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate
And the warden is Despair.

– Oscar Wilde

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

I don’t at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited.

– Oscar Wilde

An Ideal Husband, Lord Goring, Act 4.

All bad art is the result of good intentions.

– Oscar Wilde

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

– Oscar Wilde

The Importance of Being Earnest, Gwendolen, Act 3.

It is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologize to one in private for what they have written against one in public.

– Oscar Wilde

The Soul of Man Under Socialism

Whatever music sounds like, I am glad to say that it does not sound in the smallest degree like German.

– Oscar Wilde

The Critic as Artist

The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature’s lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.

– Oscar Wilde

The Decay of Lying

What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.

– Oscar Wilde

Lady Windermere’s Fan, Lady Windermere, Act 4.

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