There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

This line is genuinely and precisely traceable to Oscar Wilde: it appears in Chapter 1 of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde's only novel, first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890 and expanded as a book in 1891. It is spoken not by Wilde in his own voice but by his glittering cynic Lord Henry Wotton, who delivers it to the painter Basil Hallward while urging him to exhibit the portrait of Dorian rather than hide it away — one of the many polished paradoxes Wilde puts in the mouth of "Prince Paradox." The verbatim wording is confirmed against the novel's full text and against published collected editions of Wilde's works, where it sits within the same passage ("A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England..."). We found no competing author and no evidence the line predates Wilde. Like a great many "Oscar Wilde quotes," it originates as a character's dialogue, but the words are unmistakably Wilde's own authored text, and the attribution is solid.