Is "True friends stab you in the front" really by Oscar Wilde?

Q: Is "True friends stab you in the front" really by Oscar Wilde?

No. No work of Wilde's contains this line, and he died in 1900. Wikiquote files it under Disputed and gives the earliest known example as Walter Winchell's syndicated column of mid-January 1955, reporting a Broadway gag; the first credit to Wilde it can find is a 1989 book, offered with no source.

Who really said it

True friends stab you in the front

Not Oscar Wilde — an unsourced mid-century wisecrack Unknown First recorded mid-January 1955 · Broadway wisecrack quoted by Walter Winchell

Disputed Rights unconfirmed

No work of Wilde’s contains this line, and he died in 1900. Wikiquote files it under Disputed and gives the earliest known example as Walter Winchell’s syndicated column of mid-January 1955, reporting a Broadway gag; the first credit to Wilde it can find is a 1989 book, offered with no source.

Last verified 27 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“True friends stab you in the front” Not Oscar Wilde. “True friends stab you in the front” has no source anywhere in Wilde’s work — he died in 1900. The earliest known example is a Broadway wisecrack quoted in Walter Winchell’s syndicated column in mid-January 1955; the first credit to Wilde appears in 1989, with no source given. — Quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Oscar Wilde. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the themes of friendship, truth and character. Theme: "True friends stab you in the front". 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 "True friends stab you in the front". 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 comes from

Earliest known appearance: Walter Winchell’s syndicated newspaper column, mid-January 1955
Wording then: “a true friend is one who stabs you in the front”
First credited to Wilde: The Devil’s Advocates: Decadence in Modern Literature (1989)
In Wilde’s own writing: Not found — he died in 1900

On Broadway, cynically reports Jimmy Nelson, “a true friend is one who stabs you in the front” Winchell column, Jan 1955

As transcribed in Wikiquote’s Disputed section ↗, which cites a scan of the Pharos-Tribune (Logansport, Indiana) for 16 January 1955. That scan is paywalled and we could not open it, so this is Wikiquote’s reading of the column, not ours.

Wikiquote: Oscar Wilde — Disputed

Paper trail

Mid-January 1955 — the first known appearance is a Broadway gag in Walter Winchell’s syndicated column: “On Broadway, cynically reports Jimmy Nelson, ‘a true friend is one who stabs you in the front’”, as transcribed by Wikiquote ↗. Note that even here Winchell is relaying it as something already in circulation.
1958 to 1984 — the quip keeps changing hands. Wikiquote records ↗ a 1958 version credited to actor Steve Dunne, a 1981 version credited to writer-producer Leonard Levinson — in Gus McLeavy’s The Bathroom Almanac ↗ — and a 1984 Ms. Magazine piece calling it simply the Hollywood definition of a friend.
1989 — the earliest credit to Wilde that Wikiquote can find, in the form “A good friend is one who stabs you in the front”, appears in Thomas R. Whissen’s The Devil’s Advocates: Decadence in Modern Literature (1989) ↗. No source is given for the attribution.
Today — the polished expansion “A true friend stabs you in the front, not the back” circulates on Goodreads under Wilde’s name ↗, still with no work, page or date attached to it.

We make no rights claim for this wording. It cannot be tied to any identifiable authored work: the earliest record is a 1955 newspaper column relaying an already-circulating Broadway quip, and the popular modern form is a later expansion of unknown authorship. Because nothing here is pinned to a specific pre-1931 publication, this line must not be treated as public domain on the strength of Wilde’s name.

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.

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Fact-check

Who has been credited — and why none of it holds

This is a quote that has been handed round like a hat. In the thirty-four years between its first recorded appearance and its first Wilde credit, it was pinned on at least three different people, none of them with a source. Wilde was simply the name that finally stuck.

Oscar Wilde No source

Wilde died in Paris on 30 November 1900 ↗, more than fifty years before the saying is first recorded. Wikiquote places it in the Disputed section ↗ and reports that the earliest attribution to him is from 1989, with no source given.

Steve Dunne · Leonard Levinson Also unsourced

Before Wilde’s name was attached, Wikiquote records ↗ a 1958 version credited to actor Steve Dunne and a 1981 version — “He is a fine friend. He stabs you in the front” — credited to Hollywood writer and producer Leonard Levinson. Neither credit comes with a source either; the pattern is a floating gag looking for an owner.

“the Hollywood definition of a friend” Anonymous

By 1984, per Wikiquote ↗, a Ms. Magazine article was presenting it not as anyone’s line but as an industry saying — a friend being “someone who stabs you in the front.” That is what an orphaned wisecrack looks like just before a famous name adopts it.

“A true friend stabs you in the front, not the back” Later expansion

The tidier, more explanatory version now shared most widely — for example on Goodreads under Wilde’s name ↗ — is longer than any of the recorded mid-century forms and carries no book or page at all.

The honest answer: this is an anonymous mid-twentieth-century show-business wisecrack, first recorded in Walter Winchell’s column in mid-January 1955 ↗, that did not acquire Oscar Wilde’s name until 1989.

Context

What Wilde actually said about friends and enemies

Wilde is one of the internet’s two or three great attribution magnets, and this line is a textbook case of why. It has the shape of a Wilde epigram — a moral inversion delivered flat, turning “stabbed in the back” inside out so that brutal honesty becomes the mark of real friendship. It is genuinely good. It simply is not his.

The paper trail runs the other way round. The saying first surfaces in mid-twentieth-century American show business, drifts between named comedians and writers for thirty years without settling on any of them, and only picks up Wilde’s name in 1989 — at which point the name sticks, because a name sells a quote. What Wilde really wrote on the subject is sharper and stranger: in The Picture of Dorian Gray ↗, Lord Henry announces that he chooses his friends for their good looks, his acquaintances for their good characters, and his enemies for their good intellects — “A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

How solid is the 1955 date?

The 1955 Winchell citation comes from Wikiquote, which transcribes the column line and cites a scan of the Pharos-Tribune (Logansport, Indiana) hosted on Newspapers.com. That scan sits behind a paywall and returned a 403 to us, so we have not independently inspected the printed page; we are relying on Wikiquote’s transcription and flagging that honestly rather than presenting the newspaper as something we read.

The two Google Books items Wikiquote cites we did check directly: the 1981 volume is Gus McLeavy’s The Bathroom Almanac, and the 1989 volume that first attaches Wilde’s name is Thomas R. Whissen’s The Devil’s Advocates: Decadence in Modern Literature. Quote Investigator, which normally handles quotes of this profile, has never published on this one — so Wikiquote’s Disputed entry is the best research available, and we do not claim anything beyond it.

Explore

Filed under

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

Friendship Truth Character

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.

Wikiquote: Oscar Wilde — Disputeden.wikiquote.org

The anchor research: files the line as Disputed and lays out the 1955 → 1958 → 1981 → 1989 attribution trail with citations.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (full text)gutenberg.org

Wilde’s novel in full — contains his real friends-and-enemies epigram, and no instance of “stabs you in the front.”

The Devil’s Advocates (1989)books.google.com

Thomas R. Whissen’s study of literary decadence — the volume Wikiquote identifies as the earliest source to credit the line to Wilde.

The Bathroom Almanac (1981)books.google.com

Gus McLeavy’s trivia collection — the 1981 volume Wikiquote cites for the Leonard Levinson version of the quip.

The quote on Goodreads, credited to Wildegoodreads.com

The expanded modern wording circulating under Wilde’s name with no book, page or date attached — the misattribution in the wild.

Oscar Wildeen.wikipedia.org

Biography and dates: born 16 October 1854, died in Paris 30 November 1900 — decades before the line is first recorded.

The magnet

Why the line lands on Wilde

Oscar Wilde

1854–1900 · Irish poet, playwright and wit

Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet, playwright and critic whose comedies — Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Earnest — and his one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, made him the most quotable writer of the Victorian era. He died in Paris on 30 November 1900. Precisely because his real epigrams are compressed, cynical and inverted, almost any clever reversal now gets pinned to him, and this friendship line is one of the most travelled examples.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest known appearance

“Oscar Wilde,” Wikiquote, “Disputed” section, accessed 27 July 2026, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde#Disputed — giving Walter Winchell’s syndicated column of mid-January 1955 (“a true friend is one who stabs you in the front,” reported from Jimmy Nelson) as the earliest known example, and Thomas R. Whissen, The Devil’s Advocates: Decadence in Modern Literature (1989) as the earliest attribution to Wilde, with no source given.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘True friends stab you in the front’?” Last verified 27 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/true-friends-stab-you-in-the-front/