30 Oscar Wilde Quotes: Paradox as a Working Method
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish poet, playwright and critic who became the most talked-about man in London and then its most notorious convict. Born in Dublin to a surgeon and a nationalist poet, he took a double first at Oxford and built a career on being quotable before he had written much worth quoting. His four society comedies made him rich; a libel suit he brought himself in 1895 led to his conviction for gross indecency and two years of hard labour. He died in Paris at forty-six, bankrupt and using another name.
Photo: Napoleon Sarony / Adam Cuerden — Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Wilde's wit has a shape you can learn. Take a sentence everyone agrees with, keep its rhythm exactly, and invert the moral. Temptation should be resisted, so the only way to get rid of it is to yield to it. Losing a parent is a tragedy, so losing two looks like carelessness. Once you see the machine you can hear it running under almost every line below, and you can also spot the fakes, because forgers rarely get the rhythm right.
The engine: respectable sentiment, reversed
I can resist everything except temptation. — *Lady Windermere's Fan*, Lord Darlington
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. — *The Picture of Dorian Gray*, Lord Henry
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. — *The Importance of Being Earnest*, Lady Bracknell
In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing. — *The Importance of Being Earnest*, Gwendolen
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. — *The Picture of Dorian Gray*
On society, from the plays
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. — *Lady Windermere's Fan*, Lord Darlington
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. — *Lady Windermere's Fan*
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. — *Lady Windermere's Fan*, Lord Darlington
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. — *Lady Windermere's Fan*
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. — *Lady Windermere's Fan*
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. — *The Importance of Being Earnest*, Algernon
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. — *The Importance of Being Earnest*, Gwendolen
On art, where he was entirely serious
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. — *The Picture of Dorian Gray*, preface
All art is quite useless. — *The Picture of Dorian Gray*, preface
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. — *The Picture of Dorian Gray*, preface
Life imitates art far more than art imitates life. — *The Decay of Lying*
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. — *The Soul of Man Under Socialism*
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at. — *The Soul of Man Under Socialism*
The preface to Dorian Gray was written after the novel was attacked as indecent, and it is the closest thing Wilde produced to a manifesto. Every line in it is a defence disguised as an aphorism. Five years later the same novel was read aloud in court as evidence against him, which is the strongest argument anyone has ever made against the claim that books are neither moral nor immoral.
From Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance.
After the trial
Yet each man kills the thing he loves — *The Ballad of Reading Gaol*, 1898
I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously. — *De Profundis*
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. — *De Profundis*
Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. — *De Profundis*
Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. — *De Profundis*
Two more, on self and education
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. — *An Ideal Husband*
I am not young enough to know everything. — *An Ideal Husband*
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. — *A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated*
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. — *The Picture of Dorian Gray*
Four attributed to him without evidence
- "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken." The single most quoted Wilde line on the internet and the one with the least support. It appears in no work, letter or reported conversation, and the earliest printed traces are from the late twentieth century.
- "I have nothing to declare except my genius." Supposedly said to New York customs in 1882. No contemporary report records it; the story surfaces in biographies decades later.
- "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." Reads like Wilde, which is the problem. It is not in the published work.
- "Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination." Widely circulated, never sourced to a text.
That so many forgeries pass is a backhanded compliment. Wilde made a style so recognisable that other people can write in it, and the counterfeits spread faster than the originals because they have been polished by repetition. The test is simple enough: a real Wilde line can be traced to a page.
What is Oscar Wilde's most famous quote?
By volume of circulation it is "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken", which he did not write. Of the genuine lines, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" is the most quoted.
Is "I can resist everything except temptation" from a play?
Yes. Lord Darlington says it in the first act of Lady Windermere's Fan, first performed in 1892.
What is De Profundis?
A long letter Wilde wrote from Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas. It was not published in full until 1962, and it is the least epigrammatic and most direct thing he ever wrote.
Sources
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