Oscar Wilde

Wilde is a magnet for misattribution for an obvious reason: he was actually witty, so any sufficiently clever line ends up credited to him whether he said it or not. Some of the quotes below are genuinely his, pulled straight from his plays, letters, and essays. Others are just good enough to sound like him.“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” is real, straight out of Lady Windermere’s Fan. “Genius is born—not paid” is genuinely disputed — the post walks through why.