Oscar Wilde's Most Inspirational Quotes: A Timeless Collection

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."

- Oscar Wilde

"You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear."

- Oscar Wilde

"I have nothing to declare except my genius."

- Oscar Wilde

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

- Oscar Wilde

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

- Oscar Wilde

"The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

- Oscar Wilde

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."

- 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

"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much."

- 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

"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known."

- Oscar Wilde

"Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more."

- Oscar Wilde

"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."

- Oscar Wilde

"For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are."

- Oscar Wilde

"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead."

- Oscar Wilde

"Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

- Oscar Wilde

"Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes."

- Oscar Wilde

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

- Oscar Wilde

"You can never be overdressed or overeducated."

- Oscar Wilde

"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation."

- Oscar Wilde

"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

- Oscar Wilde

"Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope."

- Oscar Wilde

"To realise one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for."

- Oscar Wilde

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all."

- Oscar Wilde

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live."

- Oscar Wilde

"Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary."

- Oscar Wilde

"A good friend will always stab you in the front."

- Oscar Wilde

"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

- Oscar Wilde

"What a silly thing love is! It is not half as useful as logic, for it is always telling one things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true."

- Oscar Wilde

"I am not young enough to know everything."

- J.M. Barrie

"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

"No man is rich enough to buy back his past."

- Oscar Wilde

"I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects."

- Oscar Wilde

"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."

- 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

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

- Oscar Wilde

"True friends stab you in the front."

- Oscar Wilde

"All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital."

- Oscar Wilde

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

- Oscar Wilde

"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one."

- Oscar Wilde

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

- 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

"I can resist everything except temptation."

- Oscar Wilde

"A man who does not think for himself does not think at all."

- Oscar Wilde

"Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result."

- Oscar Wilde

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

- Oscar Wilde

"It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection."

- Oscar Wilde

"Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life."

- Oscar Wilde

"Who, being loved, is poor?"

- Oscar Wilde

"It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly."

- Oscar Wilde

"There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

- Oscar Wilde

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."

- Oscar Wilde

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

- Oscar Wilde

"Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals."

- Oscar Wilde

"Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not."

- Oscar Wilde

"Love is easily killed."

- Oscar Wilde

"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."

- Oscar Wilde

"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike."

- Oscar Wilde

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."

- Oscar Wilde

"The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything."

- Oscar Wilde

"The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself."

- Oscar Wilde

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."

- Oscar Wilde

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."

- Oscar Wilde

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."

- Oscar Wilde

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."

- Oscar Wilde

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."

- Oscar Wilde

"Hearts are made to be broken."

- Oscar Wilde

"The very essence of romance is uncertainty."

- Oscar Wilde

"Life is never fair . . . And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not."

- Oscar Wilde

"When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."

- Oscar Wilde

"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one."

- Oscar Wilde

"The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."

- Oscar Wilde

"All art is quite useless."

- Oscar Wilde

"Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood."

- Oscar Wilde

"Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance."

- Oscar Wilde

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

- Oscar Wilde

"A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her."

- Oscar Wilde

"One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be."

- Oscar Wilde

"I have the simplest of tastes. I am always satisfied with the best."

- Oscar Wilde

"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives."

- Oscar Wilde

"Ambition is the last refuge of the failure."

- Oscar Wilde

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."

- Oscar Wilde

"If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life."

- Oscar Wilde

"I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best."

- Oscar Wilde

"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."

- Oscar Wilde

"One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry."

- Oscar Wilde

"Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us."

- Oscar Wilde

"As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied."

- Oscar Wilde

"I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability."

- Oscar Wilde

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."

- Oscar Wilde

"I can never travel without my diary, one should always have something sensational to read on the train."

- Oscar Wilde

"Men become old, but they never become good."

- Oscar Wilde

"Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

- Oscar Wilde

"When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers."

- Oscar Wilde

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious."

- Oscar Wilde

"Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself."

- Oscar Wilde

"One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything."

- Oscar Wilde

"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power."

- Oscar Wilde

"Everything in moderation, including moderation."

- Oscar Wilde

"Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."

- Oscar Wilde

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

- Oscar Wilde

"I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there."

- Oscar Wilde

"This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last."

- Oscar Wilde