Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Absinthe: After the First Glass, You See Things As You Wish They Were

Spoken by Oscar Wilde 1854–1900 · Irish poet, playwright and wit
Verified Free to reuse

Wilde said it out loud, and the person who wrote it down was Ada Leverson — the friend he nicknamed Sphinx, who sheltered him in her own nursery when no hotel in London would take him. She printed the conversation in Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde in 1930, thirty years after his death, and Quote Investigator verified pages 39–40 from scans ↗ of one of the 275 copies that edition ran to. QI’s conclusion is that the quotation “is considered to be authentic”. Two things the short version loses: there is a third glass, and it is the worst one — “finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world” — and Wilde went on to explain himself with a top hat.

Last verified 3 Oct 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Verified quote & credit

“Absinthe: After the First Glass, You See Things As You Wish They Were” Oscar Wilde — “After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.” On absinthe, recorded by Ada Leverson in Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde (1930), pp. 39-40. Via quotle.info

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Oscar Wilde — Irish poet, playwright and wit. Theme: "Absinthe: After the First Glass, You See Things As You Wish They Were". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Absinthe: After the First Glass, You See Things As You Wish They Were". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Earliest documented
Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde: With Reminiscences of the Author
Recorded by
Ada Leverson (1862–1933), the friend Wilde called “Sphinx”
Published
1930 (Duckworth, London) — a limited edition of 275 copies
Locator
Pages 39–40, verified from scans by Quote Investigator with the Smathers Library, University of Florida (copy 240 of 275)
Form
Reported conversation — Wilde spoke it; Leverson published it three decades after his death

One day he was talking of the effect of absinthe. “After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean disassociated. Take a top-hat! You think you see it as it really is. But you don’t, because you associate it with other things and ideas. If you had never heard of one before, suddenly saw it alone, you’ld be frightened, or laugh. That is the effect absinthe has, and that is why it drives men mad.” Pages 39–40

Leverson’s text as transcribed by Quote Investigator from the 1930 scans ↗, including her dialogue and the odd contraction “you’ld”, which is hers. The famous quotation is only the first three sentences; the top-hat passage is Wilde being asked to explain the joke and answering seriously.

Quote Investigator: Absinthe: After the First Glass, You See Things As You Wish They Were

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator’s investigation ↗ names the earliest evidence as Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde: With Reminiscences of the Author by Ada Leverson, 1930, pages 39–40, Duckworth, London — marked “Verified with scans”, with thanks to the librarians of the Smathers Library at the University of Florida, which holds number 240 of the 275-copy edition. QI notes the limited print run “impeding straightforward access”, which is why no full-text link appears on this page: there is no public scan to link to.
  • QI concludes in its own words that the quote “is considered to be authentic, and it reflects Wilde’s complex relationship with the green spirit” — noting that scholars accept it even though Wilde died in 1900, three decades before Leverson published, because the two were close friends and she stood by him through his trials.
  • Wikiquote carries the line in its sourced Wilde section ↗ with the same citation — “Said about Absinthe. Quoted in Ada Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde: With Reminiscences of the Author (London: Duckworth, 1930)” — which independently confirms the book, the city and the year.
  • QI tracks three later reappearances, each reported here as QI gives them rather than consulted directly: a fictionalised 1938 stage Wilde speaking a reworded version in Oscar Wilde: A Play by Leslie and Sewell Stokes, page 147; Hesketh Pearson repeating Leverson’s material in his 1946 Wilde biography, page 274; and Leverson’s own daughter, Violet Wyndham, reprinting it in The Sphinx and Her Circle in 1963, page 117.
  • Wikipedia’s article on Leverson ↗ confirms the nickname and the loyalty behind it: Wilde called her “Sphinx”, and during his 1895 trials “Leverson and her husband invited Wilde to stay in their nursery, because no hotel or inn would accept him as a guest”. Letters to the Sphinx, published by Duckworth in 1930, was her last book.
Public domain

Public domain in the United States. The wording reaches us from Ada Leverson’s Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde, first published by Duckworth in 1930 — before the 1931 cutoff, and works published in 1930 entered the US public domain on 1 January 2026. Wilde himself died in 1900, so nothing he wrote is in copyright either. Quote it freely. The one practical catch is access rather than rights: the 1930 edition ran to 275 copies and there is no public scan, so the text below is QI’s transcription from library scans.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What to watch for

Wilde is one of the most quote-magnetised writers in English, and lines are invented for him constantly. This is not one of those — the attribution holds. What goes wrong here is the shape of the quotation and a muddle about whose words they are.

Ada Leverson Recorder, not the author

Because the only source is Leverson’s book, quote databases sometimes file the line under her name. She is the witness, not the speaker: her own text introduces it with “One day he was talking of the effect of absinthe”, and then quotes Wilde. QI treats Wilde as the author throughout ↗, and so does Wikiquote.

The two-glass version Context stripped

Posters and cocktail menus usually stop after the second glass, where it still sounds charming. Wilde’s point is in the third: “Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.” Cut that and you have an advertisement; keep it and it is a warning — he ends by saying this is “why it drives men mad”.

Transcriptions that differ Minor wording drift

Wikiquote’s text ↗ reads “After the second glass you see things as they are not”, where QI’s transcription from the scans ↗ has “After the second, you see them as they are not.” The version shown on this page is QI’s, because it was taken from the 1930 pages themselves. The 1938 Stokes play rewrote it again for the stage, which is where several looser versions come from.

QI’s conclusion ↗: authentic Wilde, documented in Ada Leverson’s 1930 memoir at pages 39–40 — and three sentences long, not two.

Context

Why it mattered

Absinthe in Wilde’s Paris was the drink of the artistic demi-monde, and it was about to be legislated out of existence: by 1915 it had been banned in the United States and across much of Europe. What is striking about this passage is that it is not a toast. Wilde describes the drug as a machine for stripping the associations off objects until they are merely themselves, and calls the result the most horrible thing in the world.

Then he is asked what he means, and instead of deflecting he produces a top hat. You do not see a top hat, he says; you see everything you already know about top hats. Take that away and you would be frightened of it, or you would laugh. It is a genuinely good account of how perception works, delivered by a man explaining why a liqueur drove people mad.

Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.

Read the full story

Leverson earned the right to be believed. Wilde called her the Sphinx; when the 1895 trials made him unhousable, she and her husband put him up in their nursery because no hotel would have him, and she met him on the morning of his release from prison in 1897. Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde, published by Duckworth in 1930, was her last book, and she died three years later. The absinthe conversation appears there among her reminiscences, not among the letters.

The one honest weakness in the record is the print run. QI says the 1930 edition ran to 275 copies, which it calls an impediment to straightforward access, and it reached the text only through the Smathers Library at the University of Florida, which holds copy number 240. There is no public scan to link, so every version in circulation — including this one — descends from somebody else’s transcription of those two pages. QI’s is the one taken from the scans, which is why it is the text shown above.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Truth Doubt Wisdom

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Absinthe: After the First Glass…quoteinvestigator.com

The full passage with the top-hat explanation, the 1930 locator verified from scans, and the chain of later reappearances.
Oscar Wilde — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Carries the absinthe line with the same Leverson 1930 citation, in the sourced section.
Ada Leversonen.wikipedia.org

The woman who wrote it down: novelist, Wilde’s “Sphinx”, and the friend who took him in during the trials.
Oscar Wildeen.wikipedia.org

The speaker. Born 16 October 1854, died 30 November 1900 in Paris.
Absintheen.wikipedia.org

The drink itself, and the wave of prohibitions that had banned it across the US and much of Europe by 1915.

The author

About Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

1854–1900 · Irish poet, playwright and wit

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright who became the most celebrated talker in late-Victorian London, author of The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest. In 1895, at the height of his success, he was tried and imprisoned for homosexual offences; he served two years’ hard labour, left for France on release, and died in Paris at 46. A great deal of what survives of his conversation survives only because his friends wrote it down — which is exactly how this passage reaches us.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The earliest documented appearance (Chicago)

Ada Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde: With Reminiscences of the Author (London: Duckworth, 1930), 39–40, recording a conversation with Oscar Wilde. Cited in Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Absinthe: After the First Glass, You See Things As You Wish They Were,” 20 June 2012, which verified the pages from scans of copy 240 of 275 held by the Smathers Library, University of Florida.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Absinthe: After the First Glass, You See Things As You Wish They Were’?” Last verified 3 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/absinthe-after-the-first-glass-you-see-things-as-you-wish/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied