Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.
Not found
No. It is not in Wilde’s works, and who first wrote it is not known.
The closest real passage, shown below, is found word for word by program in the full text; the shared line is not in it.
- Closest passage
- Miscellanies (1908), The English Renaissance of Art (lecture, New York, 9 January 1882)
Researched by AI; closest passage located by program on 31 October 2026. Entry updated 20 October 2026. Editorial review: pending. How we check
Where you would expect it
The closest real passage: Miscellanies, The English Renaissance of Art (lecture, New York, 9 January 1882). The shared line is not in it.
In England, then as now, it was enough for a man to try and produce any serious beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen; and besides this, the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—among whom the names of Dante Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Millais will be familiar to you—had on their side three things that the English public never forgives: youth, power and enthusiasm.
Satire, always as sterile as it is shameful and as impotent as it is insolent, paid them that usual homage which mediocrity pays to genius1—doing, here as always, infinite harm to the public, blinding them to what is beautiful, teaching them that irreverence which is the source of all vileness and narrowness of life, but harming the artist not at all, rather confirming him in the perfect rightness of his work and ambition. […]
As regards the ideas these young men brought to the regeneration of English art, we may see at the base of their artistic creations a desire for a deeper spiritual value to be given to art as well as a more decorative value.
Pre-Raphaelites they called themselves; not that they imitated the early Italian masters at all, but that in their work, as opposed to the facile abstractions of Raphael, they found a stronger realism of imagination, a more careful realism of technique, a vision at once more fervent and more vivid, an individuality more intimate and more intense.
A gap the length of the shared sentence, which is not in the text.2
Where it comes from
The full sentence is not in any of Wilde’s works; the sources were searched for ‘sincerest form’ and ‘mediocrity’. It joins two older formulas. The first is Charles Caleb Colton’s ‘Imitation is the sincerest of flattery’ (Lacon, 1820), which had become ‘the sincerest form of flattery’ by the 1850s. The second is the Victorian pattern ‘X is the homage which mediocrity pays to genius’, modelled on La Rochefoucauld’s ‘hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue’: Quote Investigator (2024) found ‘Plagiarism is the homage that Mediocrity pays to Genius’ in an unsigned article in the Dublin Monthly Magazine (1842), ‘Imitation is the homage which Mediocrity pays to Superiority’ in Punch (1851) and ‘Envy is the homage which mediocrity pays to greatness’ in the Edinburgh News (1859). Wilde used the second pattern in his 1882 lecture, about satire (the passage shown), and in American press reports of that year; and he turned the first one round in The Decay of Lying (1891), where Vivian says Nature forgets ‘that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult’. The combined form credited to him that QI found is late: ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery mediocrity can pay to genius’, in a newspaper of 1999.
In context
Shared online as a Wilde quote that ‘completes’ the proverb ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’. Wilde never wrote this sentence. It fuses two stock Victorian sayings, both older than his career, and he used each of them, but differently. The passage shown is from his first American lecture, The English Renaissance of Art (1882), on how satire treated the Pre-Raphaelites.
What it says
Copying great work is the only tribute that the mediocre are able to pay: imitation flatters, but it also shows that the imitator cannot create.
Use with care
Not Wilde’s sentence. If you want his real twist on the proverb, quote The Decay of Lying: ‘imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult’.
Use this instead
“Satire, always as sterile as it is shameful and as impotent as it is insolent, paid them that usual homage which mediocrity pays to genius”
Miscellanies (1908), The English Renaissance of Art (lecture, New York, 9 January 1882).
Also shared as
- Two passages run togetherImitation is the sincerest form of flattery mediocrity can pay to genius. The earliest form credited to Wilde that Quote Investigator found (a newspaper of 25 June 1999). Where it was seen
- ShortenedImitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The proverb on its own, from Colton (1820); sometimes credited to Wilde as well.
Before and after
Topics
Related quotes
- Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
- A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back again when it begins to rain. (not found) Robert Frost
- Life is just one damned thing after another. (misattributed) Elbert Hubbard
- Golf is a good walk spoiled. (not found) Mark Twain
- Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. (misattributed) Frank Zappa
Sources
Cite it
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” Attributed to Oscar Wilde. No. It is not in Wilde’s works, and who first wrote it is not known. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/imitation-sincerest-form-of-flattery-mediocrity/ (checked 20 October 2026).
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