# The best Oscar Wilde quotes (and where they really come from)

Wilde's sharpest lines, each with the play, novel or essay it actually comes from. Only quotes sourced on Wikiquote: the famous «Be yourself; everyone else is already taken» is not his, and neither is «Always forgive your enemies».

- 53 votes · 20 items
- Jun 23, 2020 · Sam Lewis
- https://even.best/en/l/343/the-best-oscar-wilde-quotes-and-where-they-really-come-from

## Top 15

1. **We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.** (7 · ▲7 ▼0) — Lord Darlington in Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Act III.
2. **I can resist everything except temptation.** (5 · ▲7 ▼2) — Lord Darlington in Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Act I.
3. **Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — From the essay The Critic as Artist (1891).
4. **The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — Lord Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), chapter 2.
5. **There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), chapter 1.
6. **Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Mr Dumby in Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Act III; an earlier version appears in Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880).
7. **To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband (1895), Act III; also in Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894).
8. **Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — From the essay The Decay of Lying (1889), collected in Intentions.
9. **Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), chapter 5; Wilde reused it in A Woman of No Importance (1893).
10. **A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Lord Darlington in Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Act III.
11. **To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Act I.
12. **Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance (1893), Act III.
13. **There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — From the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891 edition).
14. **Yet each man kills the thing he loves.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), written after his release from prison.
15. **Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The Remarkable Rocket, in The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888).
16. **All art is quite useless.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The last line of the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891).
17. **The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband (1895), Act I.
18. **Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — From the short story The Sphinx Without a Secret (1887).
19. **The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), chapter 19.
20. **The truth is rarely pure and never simple.** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Act I.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.