Top 10 Oscar Wilde Quotes

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” 

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” 

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” 

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.” 

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” 

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” 

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.” 

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” 

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” 

“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” 



about Oscar Wilde

Author Oscar Wilde was known for his acclaimed works including The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as his brilliant wit, flamboyant style and infamous imprisonment for homosexuality.

Synopsis


Born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin, author, playwright and poet Oscar Wilde was a popular literary figure in late Victorian England, known for his brilliant wit, flamboyant style and infamous imprisonment for homosexuality. After graduating from Oxford University, he lectured as a poet, art critic and a leading proponent of the principles of aestheticism. In 1891, he published The Picture of Dorian Gray, his only novel which was panned as immoral by Victorian critics, but is now considered one of his most notable works. As a dramatist, many of Wilde’s plays were well received including his satirical comedies Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), his most famous play. Unconventional in his writing and life, Wilde’s affair with a young man led to his arrest on charges of "gross indecency" in 1895. He was imprisoned for two years and died in poverty three years after his release at the age of 46.