FAKE: Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
Not an Oscar Wilde quotation—but he said something like it.
THE MYTH: WHERE IT APPEARS
This quotation about authenticity has circulated widely on social media, as well as on myriad tea towels, t-shirts, and coffee mugs. The reality is that no evidence exists in his plays, essays, letters, or reported conversation that Wilde ever said it.
The attribution is seductive because Oscar Wilde embodied the philosophy of individualism and he did use the shorter expression “Be Yourself” on more than one occasion (see below).
WHERE IT ORIGINATED
The Quote Investigator has traced the remark to an anonymous internet post in 1999. Read more at the link below:
WHAT OSCAR WILDE DID SAY
There are at least two examples in Wilde’s work where he uses the shorter expression “Be yourself.”
In Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act II
Lord Darlington. You said once you would make no compromise with things. Make none now. Be brave! Be yourself!
Lady Windermere. I am afraid of being myself.
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
What Jesus meant, was this. He said to man, ‘You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you.’
Ibid.
“Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.”
