The page includes the very best Oscar Wilde love quotes (we have another page on more general, famous Oscar Wilde quotes). The very popular Irish playwright and literary London figure wrote several plays about relationships, in which his observations about love and human behaviour in the romantic context – and in the institution of marriage – pour out in abundance. Most of these Oscar Wilde love quotes are very well-known and often quoted as amusing reflections on those states by lovers and married people about their own situation.
Lovers and married couples were observed by Wilde from the outside and dealt with lightheartedly in the plays, while his major poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol contains his deeper feelings on the subject of love. The phrase ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ comes from this poem, and has become an iconic phrase in reference to the LGBT community. The poem itself is rather sad and completely devoid of the lightness and cynical acidity of Wilde’s general quotes about love and marriage.
So with this in mind, and without further ado, here’s our pick of the very best Oscar Wilde love quotes:
“How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being”.
“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life”
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”
“Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.”
“Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”
“The heart was made to be broken.”
“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.”
“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
“Who, being loved, is poor?”
“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”
“You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”
What do you think of all of these Oscar Wilde love quotes – any great one’s we’re missing? Let us know in the comments section below! Or if you’re after more romantic words, have a look at Shakespeare’s best quotes on love.
This definitely gave me a chuckle. Wilde’s “archaic” quotes strike me as being still uncomfortably pertinent, unerringly on point, today, regardless of how loudly the female opposition cries out in typical, offended protest and vehement rage at such “sexist” attitudes. Well done, Oscar. Your thoughts seem still alive and kicking.
Then they can be only true irrespective of time.
Wonderfully spot on!
Oscar Wilde’s words on love are a keen observer of our human condition with insights that pave open the gates to edens multi faceted paths.
Mmmm