Oscar Wilde (1854–1900,) fully Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, was an Irish playwright, poet, essayist, editor, and author of many witty epigrams. Wilde’s dazzling ascension to notoriety also included his tragic fall from grace.
Wilde was born in Dublin. His father was a successful surgeon and his mother, a writer and a literary host. Wilde was educated at Dublin’s Trinity College and Oxford’s Magdalen College. After graduation, he moved to London to pursue a literary career, announcing, “I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous I’ll be notorious.”
Wilde’s output was diverse. The first volume of his poetry was published in 1881. He contributed to publications such as the Pall Mall Gazette, wrote fairy tales, and published a novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891.)
Wilde’s most exceptional talent was for writing plays, and he produced a string of extremely popular comedies including Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892,) Salome (1892,) An Ideal Husband (1895,) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895.)
Drama and tragedy stained Wilde’s private life. He married Constance Lloyd in 1884. Even when he loved his wife and adored his two sons, Wilde began an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of an aristocrat. This resulted in one of the most famous trials of the 19th century. Wilde lost a libel suit after being accused as a homosexual. The prosecution exposed many details of Wilde’s private life. He was arrested, tried for gross indecency, and sentenced to two years of hard labor.
When he got out of prison, he wrote his most celebrated poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898,) concerning inhumane prison conditions. With his reputation ruined, he wandered around France and Italy. His health declined rapidly, and he died penniless in a seedy Paris hotel at age 46.
Wilde is considered the world’s most fabulous wit ever. He was a brilliant conversationalist; anecdotes abound about his famous retorts. Once, when U.S. Customs asked him if he had anything to declare upon his arrival in New York, Wilde replied, “Nothing but my genius.”
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Oscar Wilde
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Charm, Virtues, People
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Conscience
Man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is.
—Oscar Wilde
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Ambition, One liners, Failure
When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it is.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Money
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Advice
A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Sorrow
I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house-tops.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Integrity
In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: One liners, Questions
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Guilt, Honesty
What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.
—Oscar Wilde
The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
—Oscar Wilde
The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Events
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Advice
The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Criticism, Critics
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
—Oscar Wilde
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Charity
One should always be a little improbable.
—Oscar Wilde
Life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Life
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Aging, Age, Old Age
One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell that would tell anything.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Age, Trust, Women
When the gods choose to punish us, they merely answer our prayers.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Prayer
Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Genius
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
—Oscar Wilde
The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Work, Jobs
The one charm of the past is that it is the past.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Past, Past and Present
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Talent, Genius, Work
‘Know thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, ‘Be thyself’ shall be written.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Man
Lying, a telling of beautiful untrue things, this is the proper aim of art.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Art
The supreme vice is shallowness.
—Oscar Wilde
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Risk, Common Sense
I can resist everything except temptation.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Difficulty, Temptation
To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Inaction
Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Marriage
Misfortunes one can endure—they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one’s own faults—Ah! there is the sting of life.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Self-Discovery, Failure
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Actors, Self-Discovery, Caution, Acting, Honesty
Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and with his environment.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Pleasure
Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Fathers, Family
I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Family, Mistakes
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Artists, Art
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Sheridan Le Fanu Irish Novelist
Jonathan Swift Irish Satirist
Brendan Behan Irish Poet
William Butler Yeats Irish Poet
James Joyce Irish Novelist
Oliver Goldsmith Anglo-Irish Novelist, Poet
George William Russell Irish Author
Elizabeth Bowen Irish Novelist
George Bernard Shaw Irish Playwright
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington Irish Novelist