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Who really said it

I Have the Simplest Tastes; I Am Always Satisfied with the Best

Attributed to Oscar Wilde 1854–1900 · Irish poet, playwright & wit
Attributed Free to reuse

Widely credited to Wilde — and unusually for a Wilde quip, it does sit in a dated, checkable book. But it is not a book Wilde wrote. The words are Edgar Saltus’s recollection of a conversation, printed on page 20 of Oscar Wilde: An Idler’s Impression (Chicago, 1917), seventeen years after Wilde died. Nothing in Wilde’s own hand carries the line, so the credit rests on one friend’s memory.

Last verified 1 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“I Have the Simplest Tastes; I Am Always Satisfied with the Best” Oscar Wilde, as recalled by Edgar Saltus in Oscar Wilde: An Idler's Impression (Chicago: Brothers of the Book, 1917), page 20. Status: attributed — the words survive only in Saltus's recollection, published in 1917, seventeen years after Wilde's death, and appear in nothing Wilde himself wrote. Via Quotle.info.

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In context

Evoking the world of Oscar Wilde — Irish poet, playwright & aesthete. Theme: "I Have the Simplest Tastes; I Am Always Satisfied with the Best". 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.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I Have the Simplest Tastes; I Am Always Satisfied with the Best". 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

Where the line actually appears

Appears in
Oscar Wilde: An Idler’s Impression
Written by
Edgar Saltus, recalling Wilde in conversation
Published
Brothers of the Book, Chicago, 1917 — first edition of 474 copies
Page
20

I put a bold face on it. “Come to my shop,” I said, “and have dinner with me. Though,” I added, “I don’t know what I can give you.”

“Oh, anything,” Wilde replied. “Anything, no matter what. I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”

He was not boasting. One evening he dined on his “Sphinx.” Subsequently I supped with him on “Salome.” Recalled by a friend, printed 1917

Saltus prints the quip as two sentences separated by a full stop. The semicolon form now in wide circulation is a later smoothing, not the punctuation on the page. Saltus gives no date for the evening.

Scanned first edition, 1917
Turn to page 20 in the Internet Archive scan
Read the full 1917 text on Wikisource

How we got here

  • The scene, undated — Saltus arrives a week late for dinner at Wilde’s London house, apologises by inviting Wilde to eat with him instead, and admits he may have little to offer. Wilde’s reply is the quote. Saltus records no year for the evening. The passage on Wikisource ↗
  • 30 November 1900 — Wilde dies in Paris, aged 46. Everything that follows is posthumous. Wikipedia ↗
  • 1917 — Saltus publishes Oscar Wilde: An Idler’s Impression with Brothers of the Book of Chicago, in a first edition of 474 copies, the type distributed and no second edition planned. The quip is on page 20. Project Gutenberg ↗
  • 2012 — Quote Investigator reviews the case, points to the same 1917 page, judges the evidence for Wilde strong while flagging the posthumous printing, and finds no evidence Winston Churchill ever said the version bearing his name. Quote Investigator ↗
Public domain

The work carrying this line — Edgar Saltus, Oscar Wilde: An Idler’s Impression — was first published in Chicago in 1917, well before the 1931 US copyright cutoff, and is therefore in the public domain in the United States. Both Project Gutenberg and Wikisource host the complete text on that basis. Wilde’s own words, spoken before his death in 1900, carry no separate live claim.

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

Who else gets the credit

Two things go wrong with this line. It gets reassigned to a different famous wit, and the wording gets smoothed out. Neither the Churchill version nor the tidy semicolon version matches what is actually on the page.

Winston Churchill Not Churchill

“I am a man of simple tastes; I am easily satisfied with the best” is one of the most-circulated Churchill lines online. Quote Investigator found no evidence Churchill ever said it of himself. The remark was reportedly made about him by F. E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead — as Randolph Churchill told the columnist Leonard Lyons in a 1948 newspaper piece: “Mr. Churchill is a man of very simple tastes. He is always prepared to put up with the best of everything.” Quote Investigator ↗

Oscar Wilde, reworded Paraphrase

The 1917 page prints two separate sentences divided by a full stop. The semicolon form used as this page’s headline, and the smoother variant “I’m a man of simple tastes. I’m always satisfied with the best,” both circulate under Wilde’s name; neither is the punctuation or phrasing Saltus set in type. Compare the 1917 text ↗

Edgar Saltus Single witness

Even the Wilde credit is one man’s memory of a conversation, written down long afterwards and published in a 474-copy private edition. That is why Wikiquote lists the line under Attributed rather than among Wilde’s sourced works. Wikiquote ↗

The best-documented version is the one on page 20 of Saltus’s memoir. Offered dinner at short notice and warned there might not be much of it, Wilde answers: “Oh, anything. Anything, no matter what. I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” Read the passage ↗

Context

Why this one is better documented than most Wilde quips

Most of the epigrams pinned on Wilde have no paper trail at all. This one does. Edgar Saltus was an American novelist of the decadent school whose work ran parallel to Wilde’s, and who knew him personally — his memoir opens with their first meeting at Delmonico’s in New York, and moves on to Wilde married, bourgeois and domestic in his London house. The exchange in question is small and domestic too: Saltus turns up a week late for dinner, tries to cover the embarrassment by inviting Wilde out instead, and warns him there may not be much to eat.

The reply is the quote. What makes it feel authentic is the sentence Saltus puts immediately after it — a flat, unshowy aside that reads like a man remembering rather than a man inventing an epigram. But the memoir appeared in 1917, in an edition of 474 copies, seventeen years after Wilde was buried. Nobody can now check it against Wilde. That gap is the whole reason this page says “attributed” and not “verified.”

“He was not boasting.”

How the line drifted onto Winston Churchill

The joke has a second life under Churchill’s name, usually as “I am a man of simple tastes; I am easily satisfied with the best.” Quote Investigator found no evidence Churchill said any such thing about himself. What it did find was the remark being made about him: Randolph Churchill, quoted by the columnist Leonard Lyons in 1948, credited it to F. E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead.

A jest that flatters the speaker is much funnier when a friend says it about you than when you say it about yourself — which is roughly the difference between the Birkenhead version and the internet’s Churchill version. Quote Investigator notes it is possible Smith was working, directly or indirectly, from Wilde’s earlier line.

Explore

Filed under

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

Simplicity Humility Happiness

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 Investigator: I Have the Simplest Tastesquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. Traces the Wilde line to Saltus 1917 p. 20, and separates it from the Churchill version, which it attributes to Lord Birkenhead speaking about Churchill.
Oscar Wilde, an Idler's Impression — full texten.wikisource.org

Wikisource's page-by-page transcription of the 1917 book, proofread against the scan. The dinner exchange and the quote are in the body text.
Project Gutenberg eBook #32849gutenberg.org

Free full text of the same book, including the title page (Chicago, Brothers of the Book, 1917) and the colophon recording the 474-copy first edition.
1917 first edition, scannedarchive.org

Internet Archive's scan of the 1917 printing. The quote sits on the page numbered 20, matching the citation used by Quote Investigator and Wikiquote.
Oscar Wilde — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line in its Attributed section, citing Saltus 1917 p. 20 — i.e. documented, but not placed among Wilde's own sourced writings.
Oscar Wilde — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography and life dates: born Dublin, 16 October 1854; died Paris, 30 November 1900 — the death date that makes the 1917 memoir posthumous.

The man the line is pinned on

Who was Oscar Wilde?

Oscar Wilde

1854–1900 · Irish poet, playwright & aesthete

Oscar Fingal O’Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish author, poet and playwright, born in Dublin on 16 October 1854 and dead in Paris on 30 November 1900. He was a central figure in the Aestheticism movement and, by the early 1890s, one of the most popular dramatists in London — Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Earnest — before his 1895 conviction for gross indecency ended his career. His reputation as a talker is precisely the problem for quote-hunters: the epigrams that made him famous were often spoken, and survive only because someone else wrote them down later.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The 1917 memoir

Edgar Saltus, Oscar Wilde: An Idler’s Impression (Chicago: Brothers of the Book, 1917), 20.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I Have the Simplest Tastes; I Am Always Satisfied with the Best’?” Last verified 1 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-have-the-simplest-tastes-i-am-always-satisfied-with-the/

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