Vol. 06 · Misquoted ·Play ·318 of 348
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
They never said that.
What people say
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
What was actually said
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Lord Darlington — Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
Why it stuck
Correct — but almost always cited as Oscar Wilde's personal philosophy. It's Lord Darlington's line, in a play Wilde wrote about a cynic. Wilde and Darlington share a sensibility; they are not the same person.
Wilde loved the line enough to repeat it in conversation, which is how the attribution-to-author slipped.
Know another line by heart?
Play the duel and see how many you can spot. Or browse the whole shelf.