Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Still in Lord Darlington’s rooms, with the two women hidden. Darlington tells Cecil Graham he talks as if he were a man of experience and is far too young. Cecil answers that experience is an instinct about life, which he has and Tuppy (Lord Augustus, who is being led on by Mrs Erlynne) has not, and that experience is merely the name Tuppy gives to his mistakes. Dumby widens the jibe to everyone. A moment later Cecil spots Lady Windermere’s fan on the sofa.

What people call ‘experience’ is usually a flattering word for the mistakes they have made: it sounds like wisdom gained, but it mostly records errors.

Usually printed as one epigram by Wilde, sometimes as a gentle lesson that mistakes make us wiser. On stage it is a chain of club jokes at an old man’s expense, and Dumby’s general form is the cynical one: experience teaches nothing, it only renames our mistakes.

• A misquotationExperience is simply the name we give our mistakes. The usual modern wording; ‘simply’ and ‘we give our’ are not in the play.
• ShortenedExperience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Wilde’s earlier version, in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), chapter 4: Lord Henry’s reflections, given by the narrator.

• A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
• We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
• I can resist everything except temptation.
• Golf is a good walk spoiled. (not found) Mark Twain
• Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. (not found) Albert Einstein

• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde

Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), Act III. Spoken by Cecil Graham. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/experience-is-the-name-everyone-gives-to-their-mistakes/ (31 October 2026).

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