1. “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
2. “I am not young enough to know everything.”
3. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
4. “The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.”
5. “Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
6. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
7. “I have nothing to declare except my genius.”
8. “I can resist anything except temptation.”
9. “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”
10. “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”
11. “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”
12. “I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”
13. “The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.”
14. “There is no sin except stupidity.”
15. “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
16. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
17. “A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.”
18. “I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”
19. “The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.”
20. “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”
21. “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”
22. “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.”
23. “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.”
24. “I can believe anything, provided it is quite incredible.”
25. “I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood.”
26. “Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.”
27. “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”
28. “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.”
29. “Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.”
30. “The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.”
31. “A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.”
32. “Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about.”
33. “The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”
34. “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.”
35. “The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
36. “In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”
37. “The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”
38. “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
39. “I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”
40. “No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.”
41. “It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is fatal.”
42. “The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.”
43. “The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”
44. “I wish I had said that.”
45. “No, you wish you had thought of it.”
46. “I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.”
47. “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
48. “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”
49. “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
50. “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”
51. “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”
52. “I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”
53. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
54. “I have nothing to declare except my genius.”
55. “I can resist everything except temptation.”
56. “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
57. “The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.”
58. “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
59. “I am not young enough to know everything.”
60. “To get back my youth, I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.”
61. “I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do – the day after.”
62. “I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning, I will be sober, and you will still be ugly.”
63. “The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.”
64. “A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
65. “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
66. “There is no sin except stupidity.”
67. “A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.”
68. “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
69. “The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.”
70. “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
71. “One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.”
72. “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”
73. “The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.”
74. “There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”
75. “I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.”
76. “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.”
77. “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
78. “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”
79. “No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”
80. “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”
81. “It is through art and through art only that we can realize our perfection.”
82. “The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.”
83. “Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.”
These quotes capture Oscar Wilde’s wit, humor, and insightful perspective on various aspects of life and society.
