Irish author, playwright, and poet Oscar Wilde was a popular literary figure in late Victorian England and a spokesman for the late 19th-century Aesthetic movement that advocated art for art’s sake. His wit, flamboyance, and defiant independence remain with us today. Here are 20 of the best Oscar Wilde quotes.

1. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”―Oscar Wilde

2. “It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”―Oscar Wilde

3. “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”―Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

4. “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”―Oscar Wilde

5. “You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”―Oscar Wilde

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

7. “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”―Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan

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

9. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

10. “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.”―Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

11. “Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”―Oscar Wilde

12. “You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

13. “I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”―Oscar Wilde

14. “A good friend will always stab you in the front.”―Oscar Wilde

15. “Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories

16. “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

17. “Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”―Oscar Wilde

18. “The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”―Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

19. “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”―Oscar Wilde

20. “I am not young enough to know everything.”―Oscar Wilde

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