True friends stab you in the front.

No match was found in the twelve original-English works held for Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, De Profundis, The Soul of Man under Socialism, Intentions, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, The Happy Prince and Other Tales, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories, and Miscellanies. Searches included the full modern wording and the front/stab combination, including inflected forms. This is not an exhaustive search of his correspondence or every contemporary reminiscence. Wikiquote’s Disputed section traces a close form to Walter Winchell’s syndicated column in January 1955, crediting Jimmy Nelson; it identifies a 16 January printing in the Pharos-Tribune. Its earliest Wilde attribution is in a 1989 book, The Devil’s Advocates by Thomas R. Whissen, with no Wilde source. The book’s identity and year were checked in Google Books metadata, but its quoted passage and the 1955 newspaper were not directly accessible here: both textual steps rest on Wikiquote and are marked secondary. Jimmy Nelson is therefore an early credited speaker, not an established inventor. Wilde’s related passage in The Devoted Friend was read in The Happy Prince and Other Tales, paragraph 270: the selfish Miller rationalises hurtful speech as friendship. No documentary link from that story to the later stabbing wording has been established.

1. 16 January 1955Earliest found · credited to Jimmy NelsonWikiquote identifies a printing of Walter Winchell’s Broadway column crediting a close form to Jimmy Nelson; this is the earliest dated wording found in this research, not a claim to the absolute first use.a true friend is one who stabs you in the frontWalter Winchell, Broadway and Elsewhere, Pharos-Tribune (Logansport, Indiana), 16 January 1955, p. 4. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
2. 1989Credited to Oscar WildeWikiquote identifies this book as its earliest Wilde attribution, without a source in Wilde.A good friend is one who stabs you in the frontThomas R. Whissen, The Devil’s Advocates: Decadence in Modern Literature (1989). Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source

The saying circulates as a Wilde epigram about candour and friendship. UNSW’s public page for a Sydney Writers’ Festival debate credits it to Wilde, but names no work or contemporary witness. The documented history reported by Wikiquote starts with a twentieth-century Broadway wisecrack, not with a Wilde publication.

The front-versus-back contrast can make painful candour sound more loyal than concealed betrayal. In the early Broadway version it is a cynical joke about friendship, not necessarily praise for frank advice.

Neither a verified Wilde quotation nor reliable evidence of his advice about friendship. His story The Devoted Friend does contain a different remark about friends giving pain, but it is spoken by the exploitative Miller and is not proof that this later wording is Wilde’s.

Not authenticated as Wilde. The related Miller speech is a satire of exploitative friendship, not a warrant for cruelty.

• The form on posters and social mediaTrue friends stab you in the front. Credited to Wilde in UNSW’s public event description; establishes present circulation, not Wilde authorship. Where it was seen

Pain, Truth, Friendship, Morality, Wisdom

• 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
• Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. (not found)
• Golf is a good walk spoiled. (not found) Mark Twain
• Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. (not found)
• A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. (not found) Mark Twain

• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde#Disputed
• unswcentreforideas.com/article/swf-great-debate-true-friends-stab-you-front

“True friends stab you in the front.” Attributed to Oscar Wilde. No. No source in Wilde has been established. A close form was printed in Walter Winchell’s column in 1955, credited to Jimmy Nelson; the early history here rests on Wikiquote, not directly inspected newspaper pages. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/true-friends-stab-you-in-the-front/ (checked 28 October 2026).

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