Oscar Wilde

A playwright, poet, and writer; author of “The Importance of Being Earnest”.

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25 quotations — 10 Funny, 15 Serious.


  1. Action: The last resource of those who know not how to dream.
    1.
  2. I couldn't help it.
    I can resist everything except temptation.
    2.
  3. I have nothing to declare except my Genius.
    [When passing through a customs checkpoint, in New York.]
    3.
  4. I have the simplest tastes.
    I am always satisfied with the very best.
    4.
  5. I must decline your invitation, owing to a subsequent engagement.
    5.
  6. Some cause happiness wherever they go.
    Others, whenever they go.
    6.
  7. The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
    7.
  8. The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
    8.
  9. When I was young, I thought that money was the most important thing in life.
    Now that I'm old, I know it is.
    9.
  10. Working is the curse of the drinking class.
    10.

  11. A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.
    11.
  12. A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
    12.
  13. A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
    13.
  14. A woman will do anything for a man she once loved.
    Except love him again.
    14.
  15. All women become like their mothers; that is their tragedy.
    No man does; that's his.
    15.
  16. Always forgive your enemies.
    Nothing annoys them as much.
    16.
  17. America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence, without civilization in between.
    17.
  18. Bigamy is having one wife too many.
    Monogamy is the same.
    18.
  19. Education is an admirable thing.
    But it is well to remember, from time to time, that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
    19.
  20. He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
    [On George Bernard Shaw.]
    20.
  21. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
    21.
  22. I never travel without my diary.
    One should always have something sensational to read, on the train.
    22.
  23. Most people are other people.
    Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, and their passions a quotation.
    23.
  24. The only way to atone for occasionally being over-dressed is by always being over-educated.
    24.
  25. The public is wonderfully tolerant.
    It forgives everything except genius.
    25.