“Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition
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Famous Oscar Wilde Quotes
“Young men want to be faithful, and are not. Old men want to be faithless, and cannot.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Story of a Fashionable Young Man Who Sells His Soul for Eternal Youth and Beauty (Beloved Books Edition)
Source: A Critic in Pall Mall
Source: The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest: Revised Edition
“Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won't expect it back.”
“Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.”
Source: The Best of Oscar Wilde: Selected Plays and Writings
“We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.”
“It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.”
Source: The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde
“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”
Source: The Canterville Ghost and Other Stories
“The man who says his wife can't take a joke, forgets that she took him.”
“I love acting. It is so much more real than life.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts
“Ones real life is often the life that one does not lead.”
Source: The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde
“I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception.”
“Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
“The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.”
“Really, if the lower orders don't set a good example, what on earth is the use of them?”
Source: An Ideal Husband
“However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive.”
Source: An Ideal Husband
“I never play cricket. It requires one to assume such indecent postures.”
“The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water.”
Source: Epigrams of Oscar Wilde
Source: A Woman of No Importance
“Love is like a war; easy to start but hard to end and you never know where it might take you.”
“Give me the luxuries and I can dispense with the necessities.”
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest
Source: The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde
“Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.”
Source: Aphorisms
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“Dammit Sir, it's your duty to get married. You can't always be living for pleasure!”
“It takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing”
Source: Wilde Complete Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest; A Woman of No Importance; Salome; The Duchess of Padua; Vera, or the Nihilists; A Florentine Tragedy; La Sainte Courtisane
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)
“Don't give a woman advice; one should never give a woman anything she can't wear in the evening.”
“The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance.”
Source: Epigrams of Oscar Wilde
Source: Aphorisms
“It is a very dangerous thing to know one’s friends.”
Source: The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde