Verified Quotes
Every quote on this page is verified against the named source work.
Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright and wit who treated the self as a work of art and paid the full price of living against, gets quoted everywhere and sourced almost nowhere. The 17 quotes below are different: each one is checked word for word against the cited work, starting with The Picture of Dorian Gray, not copied from aggregator sites that pass misattributions along. The source is named under every line, so you can trace each quote back to the page it came from.
Read Oscar Wilde's full profile and how they reason →3 verified quotes
On staying hopeful during a genuinely bad stretch of life:
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
On admitting you are about to make the same mistake again:
I can resist everything except temptation.Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
On reframing a career setback as something useful:
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
2 verified quotes
On learning self respect before expecting it from a partner:
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband
Deciding how to repair a relationship with an adult child who has judged you harshly:
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband
4 verified quotes
On rationalizing a decision you already know is unwise:
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Deciding whether to chase youth or make peace with the age you are:
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Deciding how much weight to give first impressions before writing them off:
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Weighing whether to choose the harder right thing over the easier happy one:
When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
1 verified quote
On the difference between independence and controlling everyone around you:
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
3 verified quotes
On being judged for a loss that was not your fault:
To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness.Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Deciding whether ending a marriage might be the honest choice rather than the failure:
Divorces are made in heaven.Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Deciding how much of the messy truth to tell someone who wants a clean answer:
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
4 verified quotes
On grief that will not fit into a tidy timeline:
Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
On accepting that you may never fully understand your own motives:
The final mystery is oneself.Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
Deciding whether to sit with grief instead of rushing past it:
Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
Taking ownership of a downfall instead of blaming circumstance:
I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand.Oscar Wilde, De Profundis