Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.

The line belongs to Act III of Lady Windermere’s Fan, in Lord Darlington’s rooms, where the men are trading epigrams late at night, unaware that Lady Windermere is hiding behind a curtain. Darlington has just defined a cynic as “A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Cecil Graham claims to be a man of experience, “a question of instinct about life”, and adds that experience is the name Tuppy, old Lord Augustus, gives to his mistakes.

Dumby turns the jibe into a general truth. Cecil replies that one shouldn’t commit any; Dumby, that “Life would be very dull without them.” At that very moment Cecil notices Lady Windermere’s fan on the sofa, the clue that threatens to expose her.

The play opened in London in February 1892 and made Wilde’s name as a dramatist. He had already slipped the same idea into The Picture of Dorian Gray, where experience is merely the name men give to their mistakes.

Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act III (Dumby), 1892

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