Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.
Genuine
Yes. In Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories (1891), The Sphinx Without a Secret, opening conversation at the Café de la Paix, said by the unnamed first-person narrator. These are the character’s words, not a statement in Wilde’s own voice.
Found word for word by program in the full text.
- Work
- Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories, 1891
- Where
- The Sphinx Without a Secret, opening conversation at the Café de la Paix
- Found at
- Paragraph 357 of the text
Researched by AI; checked by program against the full text on 31 October 2026. Editorial review: pending. How we check
On the page
‘I don’t understand women well enough,’ he answered.
‘My dear Gerald,’ I said, ‘women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.1’
‘I cannot love where I cannot trust,’ he replied.
‘I believe you have a mystery in your life, Gerald,’ I exclaimed; ‘tell me about it.’
The scene
The unnamed narrator meets his old Oxford friend Lord Murchison in Paris and asks whether he has married. Murchison says he does not understand women; the narrator answers with this epigram, and Murchison replies that he cannot love without trust. Murchison then tells of Lady Alroy and the secrecy he could not stop investigating.
What it means
The narrator proposes affection rather than analysis as the proper response to women; Murchison immediately objects that love requires trust.
Often misread
Often used as Wilde’s own advice about all women. It is the narrator’s conversational generalisation in a story about male suspicion and a woman’s performance of mystery, and the other character immediately challenges it. The year given is the collected edition held in the corpus, not a claim about the story’s first periodical appearance.
Topics
Related quotes
- When I’m good, I’m very good. But when I’m bad, I’m better. Mae West
- When women go wrong, men go right after them. Mae West
- Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? (not found) Albert Camus
- Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
- It’s not the men in your life that counts, it’s the life in your men. Mae West
Cite it
Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories (1891), The Sphinx Without a Secret, opening conversation at the Café de la Paix. Spoken by the unnamed first-person narrator. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/women-are-meant-to-be-loved-not-understood/ (31 October 2026).
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Checked by people
People who checked this entry against its source, under their own names. Their checks do not change the verdict: an editor reviews every entry.
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