Quotes

by Oscar Wilde

There are many, many famous quotes by Oscar Wilde. Here are some of them and some lesser known ones.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.—A Picture of Dorian Gray

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.—A Picture of Dorian Gray

He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.—A Picture of Dorian Gray

I can resist everything except temptation.—A Picture of Dorian Gray

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.—Aphorisms

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.—De Profundis

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.—Sebastian Melmoth

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.—Lady Windermere's Fan

Ah, well, then, I suppose that I shall have to die beyond my means.—when told of the amount for an operation he had to have

The two great turning points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison.—De Profundis

about Oscar Wilde

One has the impression that he never put out more than half of his strength in his books.—Vincent O'Sullivan

Oscar Wilde did not dive very deeply below the surface of human nature, but found, to a certain extent rightly, that there is more on the surface of life than is seen by the eyes of most people.—J. T. Grein

He was never quite sure himself where and when he was serious.—Robert Ross

I think his fate is rather like Humpty Dumpty's, quite as tragic and quite as impossible to put right.—Constance Wilde, Wilde's wife

From the beginning Wilde performed his life and continued to do so even after fate had taken the plot out of his hands.—W. H. Auden

Sources for Quotations

I use various sources for quotations on this site. Below are the most common sources I use. I also draw from my own collection of quotes and from primary sources.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition. John Bartlett, Justin Kaplan, editors. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1992.

BrainyQuote. <http://www.brainyquote.com/>

The Dictionary of Biographical Quotation. Richard Kenin and Justin Wintle, editors. Dorset Press, New York, 1978

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, fourth edition. Angela Partington, editor. Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York, 1992

Peter's Quotations by Laurence J. Peter. Bantam Books, New York, 1980

The Quotations Page. <http://www.quotationspage.com/>