Things Wilde never said
Wilde is one of the most quoted writers in English, which makes him a magnet for lines he never wrote. Here are the best-known fakes, and the real lines that are always slightly misquoted, with where each one really comes from.
Not Wilde
"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
Nothing like this appears in Wilde's writings or in any record of his conversation. Quote Investigator found the earliest exact match in an anonymous Usenet post of December 1999, followed by a Menards advertising supplement in 2000; the Wilde label was attached only after that. It is probably the most widely shared line credited to him that he never wrote.
Misquoted
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
The words are Wilde's, but they are not a free-standing maxim. In Act III of Lady Windermere's Fan, Lord Darlington says it in reply to Dumby's "I don't think we are bad. I think we are all good, except Tuppy." The line begins with "No," and is about the men in the room, not humanity at large; Dumby even mocks it as "very romantic."
What Wilde actually wrote
"No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
Lady Windermere's Fan Not Wilde
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
Quote Investigator found no trace of this in Wilde's work. The earliest close match is in a set of precepts by the English writer Percy Colson printed in The Sketch in April 1949: "Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so intensely." It was credited to Wilde in Reader's Digest in 1954, more than half a century after his death.
Misquoted
"Life is too important to be taken seriously."
Wilde's line is about talk, not about life itself. Lord Darlington says it in Act I of Lady Windermere's Fan, and Wilde had already given Prince Paul almost the same words in Vera; or, The Nihilists. Quote Investigator traces the shortened version to G. K. Chesterton, who reworded it in 1902 in his book on Robert Louis Stevenson.
What Wilde actually wrote
"Because I think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it."
Lady Windermere's Fan No evidence
"I have nothing to declare except my genius."
Wilde is supposed to have said this to a customs officer on arriving in New York in January 1882, but no one at the time recorded it. The earliest known printing is The Oscar Wilde Calendar of 1910, compiled by Stuart Mason (Christopher Millard), nearly thirty years after the event and ten after Wilde's death. Arthur Ransome and Frank Harris repeated it soon afterwards, and Robert Ross may have been the source for all of them.
Misquoted
"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."
Wilde wrote the idea twice, but never with "simply" or "we." In Act III of Lady Windermere's Fan, Cecil Graham says "Experience is the name Tuppy gives to his mistakes," and Dumby generalises it as below. In chapter 4 of The Picture of Dorian Gray the narrator says experience "was merely the name men gave to their mistakes."
What Wilde actually wrote
"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."
Lady Windermere's Fan Not Wilde
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."
Quote Investigator found the joke in Success Magazine in May 1908, with no author named, and in many later variants. The first attribution to Wilde came in 1955. The mix-up may come from a 1947 anthology, A Little Book of Aphorisms, where the anonymous joke was printed directly after a genuine Wilde quotation.
Misquoted
"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."
This is a trimmed version of a genuine line. Lord Henry Wotton says it to the painter Basil Hallward in the first chapter of The Picture of Dorian Gray, after Basil refuses to exhibit the portrait. Wilde wrote "only one thing in the world," which the popular version drops.
What Wilde actually wrote
"there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
The Picture of Dorian Gray No evidence
"Either that wallpaper goes, or I do."
There is good evidence that Wilde joked about the wallpaper in his room at the Hotel d'Alsace in Paris during his last illness, but not in these words. Claire de Pratz's account, published in 1929, and Richard Ellmann's 1988 biography give it as "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go." The snappier "either it goes or I do" form appears only from about 1950, and the remark was not his dying words.
Not Wilde
"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power."
Quote Investigator found no evidence connecting this to Wilde, and it is absent from Ralph Keyes's collection of his wit. The earliest close match is from the novelist Michael Cunningham in a 1995 interview in Provincetown Arts, where he disclaimed authorship and offered a doubtful attribution. It spread widely after Frank Underwood used it in the television series House of Cards in 2013.
Misquoted
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness."
The first half is Charles Caleb Colton's, from Lacon (1820): "Imitation is the sincerest of flattery." Wilde never wrote the combined sentence. What he did say, in his 1882 New York lecture The English Renaissance of Art, was that satire had paid the Pre-Raphaelites "that usual homage which mediocrity pays to genius." In The Decay of Lying he also turned Colton around, writing that imitation "can be made the sincerest form of insult."
What Wilde actually wrote
"that usual homage which mediocrity pays to genius"
The English Renaissance of Art Not Wilde
"True friends stab you in the front."
This was a Hollywood wisecrack long before it was credited to Wilde. Walter Winchell's column gave it to the entertainer Jimmy Nelson in January 1955, and later sources credited the actor Steve Dunne and the writer Leonard Levinson. The first attribution to Wilde recorded by Wikiquote's editors dates from 1989.
Not Wilde
"I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there."
No source in Wilde's writings or reported conversation has been found. Wikiquote's editors trace similar wording only to an unattributed Usenet post of 2001, and the Wilde label appears on Goodreads by 2008.
Not Wilde
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
The quip, a reversal of the temperance slogan "drink is the curse of the working classes," was in print by 1875 in the Welsh newspaper The Cambrian News, when Wilde was still a student. Frank Harris later claimed to have heard Wilde use it at a party around 1893, and Hesketh Pearson repeated this in 1946. If Wilde said it at all, he was repeating a joke that was already in circulation.
Misquoted
"When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is."
This rewrites an exchange in chapter 3 of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Lord Fermor complains that young people think money is everything, and his nephew Lord Henry replies that they find out it is true when they grow older. Quote Investigator found the first-person version credited to Wilde from 1945.
What Wilde actually wrote
"Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything." "Yes," murmured Lord Henry, settling his buttonhole in his coat; "and when they grow older they know it."
The Picture of Dorian Gray Not Wilde
"Youth is wasted on the young."
Wilde never wrote this. From 1931 the idea was credited to George Bernard Shaw, as "what a pity that it has to be wasted on children," though it has not been found in Shaw's writings either. Quote Investigator found the Wilde attribution only from 1963, when a columnist offered it tentatively.
Misquoted
"You can never be overdressed or overeducated."
This turns a piece of character comedy into life advice. In Act II of The Importance of Being Earnest, Jack tells Algernon he is always overdressed, and Algernon answers with the line below. Wilde gave Lord Henry a similar joke about Lord Grotrian in chapter 15 of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
What Wilde actually wrote
"If I am occasionally a little overdressed, I make up for it by being always immensely overeducated."
The Importance of Being Earnest Not Wilde
"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."
The line was first used about Russia, not America: the drama critic James Agate wrote in 1926 of Russia "passing from barbarism to decadence without knowing civilisation." It was later credited to Georges Clemenceau, on weak evidence. Quote Investigator found the Wilde attribution only from 2008.
Not Wilde
"Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."
Quote Investigator's earliest version is in the Brazilian writer Fernando Sabino's 1988 book O tabuleiro de damas, where he credits the saying to his father, Domingos Sabino. English versions circulated from about 2000, and the Wilde attribution is recent. It has also been pinned on John Lennon and Paulo Coelho.
Not Wilde
"Life is too short to learn German."
The joke comes from Thomas Love Peacock's novel Gryll Grange (serialised 1860, published 1861), where a character credits it to the classical scholar Richard Porson. Quote Investigator found no link to Wilde before a Usenet post of 2002.
Not Wilde
"I'm not young enough to know everything."
The line is J. M. Barrie's, spoken by Ernest in The Admirable Crichton (first staged 1902). Wilde's related epigram, printed in The Chameleon in 1894, is "The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything." Quotation books from the 1980s onward mixed up the two.
Misquoted
"England and America are two countries separated by a common language."
The popular form is usually credited to George Bernard Shaw, although it has never been found in his writings. Wilde had made a similar joke years earlier, in "The Canterville Ghost" (1887). The narrator says the American Mrs. Otis was in many ways quite English, and gives the line below.
What Wilde actually wrote
"we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language."
The Canterville Ghost No evidence
"One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."
This mockery of Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop is not in any of Wilde's writings. It first appeared in 1930, thirty years after his death, in Ada Leverson's memoir of Wilde and in Hesketh Pearson's introduction to a Wilde collection. Neither said where or when he said it.
Not Wilde
"I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."
This is Jerome K. Jerome's, from Three Men in a Boat (1889), where the narrator says it about watching other people work. Wikiquote lists it among the lines wrongly credited to Wilde.