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Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was an Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and short story writer. One of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day, known for his barbed and clever wit, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned after being convicted in a famous trial of "gross indecency" for homosexual acts.

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"How dreadful!" cried Lord Henry. "I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect."

A bad man is the sort of man who admires innocence, and a bad woman is the sort of woman a man never gets tired of.

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

A cynic is a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.

A kiss may ruin a human life.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.

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

A man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

A man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.

A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes.

A pessimist is one who, when he has a choice of two evils, chooses both.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between art and Nature.

A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

A true friend always stabs you in the front.

A true friend stabs you in the front.

A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude.

A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.

A visionary is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world.

A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.

A woman will flirt with anyone in the world, so long as other women are looking on.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

A year whose days are long.

Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.

After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relatives.

Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.

Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

All art is quite useless.

All authority is quite degrading.

All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

All influence is bad, but good influence is the worst in the world.

All repetition is anti-spiritual.

All that I desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.

All that one should know about modern life is where the Duchesses are; anything else is quite demoralising.

All the good things in life are immoral, illegal, or heavily taxed.

All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.

All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.

All women have to fight with death to keep their children. Death, being childless, wants our children from us.

Always forgive your enemies -- nothing alloys them so much.

Ambition is the last refuge of failure.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

American girls are as clever at concealing their parents as English women are at concealing their past.

An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.

An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

An ordinary man away from home giving advice.

And now, I am dying beyond my means. [Sipping champagne on his deathbed]

And the Warder is Despair.

And the wild regrets and the bloody sweats None knew so well as I: That he who lives more lives than one, More deaths than one shall die.

And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, none knew so well as I: for he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.

Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.

Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

Anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often.

Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.

Art is at once surface and symbol.

Art is not to be taught in Academies. It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. The real schools should be the streets.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices.

As a rule, I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering.

As a wicked man I am a complete failure. Why, there are lots of people who say I have never really done anything wrong in the whole course of my life. Of course they only say it behind my back.

As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.

As for modern journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.

As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have it's fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection.

As soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.

At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.

Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.

Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.

Bad manners make a journalist.

Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privileges of the rich.

Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.

Being natural is simply a pose.

Better the rule of One, whom all obey, than to let clamorous demagogues betray our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, [journalism] keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

By persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. Men should be more careful.

Caricature is the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

Children begin by loving their parents. after a time they judge them. Rarely if ever do they forgive them.

Children have a natural antipathy to books - handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.

Civilisation is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.

Clever people never listen and stupid people never talk.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.

Conscience makes egotists of us all.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.

Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.

Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.

Dammit, sir, it is your duty to get married. You can't be always living for pleasure.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

Divorces are made in Heaven.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to.

Don't be misled into the paths of virtue.

Don't give a woman advice; one should never give a woman anything she can't wear in the evening.

Don't talk about action ... Its basis is the lack of imagination.It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness.

Duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself.

Each class preaches the importance of those virtures it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.

Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.

Each time one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it.

Education is an admirable thing, but it well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is usually Judas who writes the biography.

Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. at all costs one must have wealth.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken up teaching.

Everyone should keep someone else's diary.

Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect – simply a confession of failures.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment the universal.

Fashionable is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.

Football is all very well a good game for rough girls, but not for delicate boys.

For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners.

For he who lives more lives than one: More deaths than one must die.

For his mourners will be outcast men, and outcasts always mourn.

For those who like that sort of thing, it's the sort of thing that they like.

Formerly we used to canonize our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarize them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.

Frank Harris has been received in all the great houses -- once!

Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.

From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.

Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.

Good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly the greatest harm that they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance.

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.

Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. They a

Good taste is the excuse I have given for leading such a bad life.

Good women have such limited views of life, their horizon is so small, their interests are so petty.

Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

Greek dress was in its essence inartistic. Nothing should reveal the body but the body.

He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.

He had the sort of face that, once seen, is never remembered.

He hadn't a single redeeming vice.

He has been most interesting on the subject of Patagonia. Savages seem to have quite the same views as cultured people on almost all subjects. They are excessively advanced.

He has nothing. He looks everything. What more can one desire?

He is excellent company, and he has one of the best cooks in London, and after a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.

He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.

He must be quite respectable. One has never heard his name before in the whole course of one's life, which speaks volumes for a man, nowadays.

He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about.

He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you?

He thinks like a Tory, and talks like a Radical, and that's so important nowadays.

He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.

He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.

He [Bernard Shaw] hasn't an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.

Hearts live by being wounded. Pleasure may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrow – oh, sorrow cannot break it.

Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary: when her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief.

Here is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my life. Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead?

Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.

High hopes were once formed of democracy, but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.

His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.

How absurd to talk of the equality of the sexes! Where questions of self-sacrifice are concerned, men are infinitely beyond us.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

How charming you are, dear Lord Illingworth. You always find out that one's most glaring fault is one's most important virtue. You have the most comforting views of life.

How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.

How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?

How many men there are in modern life who would like to see their past burning to white ashes before them?

How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, History would have been different.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don’t talk politics.

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.

I am dying beyond my means.

I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity to find out each other's characters before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

I am not young enough to know everything.

I am sick of women who love me. Women who hate me are much more interesting.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.

I can resist everything except temptation.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

I can sympathise with everything, except suffering.

I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

I couldn't help it. I can resist everything except temptation.

I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime. I think seventy an ideal age for a man.

I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.

I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering.

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone.

I do not play cricket because it requires me to assume such indecent postures

I don't know that women are always rewarded for being charming. I think they are usually punished for it!

I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean.

I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.

I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices.

I don't think there is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered if one made love to her. It is that which makes women so irresistibly adorable.

I don't wish to sign my name, though I am afraid everybody will know who the writer is: one's style is one's signature always.

I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that all beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful.

I have made an important discovery … that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effects of intoxication.

I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

I hope you don't think you have exhausted life, Mr. Arbuthnot. When a man says that, one knows that life has exhausted him.

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.

I know not whether Laws be right or whether Laws be wrong; all that we know who live in goal is that the wall is strong; and that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.

I like men who have a future and women who have a past.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

I like talking to a brick wall, it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me. (Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892)

I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.

I live in terror of not being misunderstood.

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all.

I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.

I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious.

I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.

I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.

I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.

I never play cricket. It requires one to assume such indecent postures.

I never put off till tomorrow what I can do the day after.

I never quarrel with anyone. My one quarrel is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.

I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky.

I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.

I never talk during music, at least during good music. If one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it in conversation.

I never travel without my dairy. One should always have something sensational to read.

I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.

I prefer women with a past. They're always so damned amusing to talk to.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

I quite admit that modern novels have many good points. All I insist on is that they, as a class, are quite unreadable.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

I sometimes think that God in creating man, somewhat overestimated His ability.

I suppose publishers are untrustworthy. They certainly always look It.

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy.

I throw probability out of the window for the sake of a phrase and the chance of an epigram makes me desert truth

I was disappointed in Niagara -- most people must be disappointed in Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

I'm glad to hear you smoke. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is.

I'm sure I don't know half the people who come to my house. Indeed, from all I hear, I shouldn't like to.

Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better.

If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.

If a man needs an elaborate tombstone in order to remain in the memory of his country, it is clear that his living at all was an act of absolute superfluity.

If a woman really repents, she has to go to a bad dressmaker, otherwise no one believes in her.

If a woman wants to hold a man, she has merely to appeal to the worst in him.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.

If one tells the truth, one is sure sooner or later to be found out.

If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.

If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.

If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty.

If there was less sympathy in the world there would be less trouble in the world.

If we men married the woman we deserve, we should have a very tedious time of it.

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself you rise from the table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days.

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.

Ignorance is like a delicate flower: touch it and the bloom is gone.

Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

In a Temple everyone should be serious, except the thing that is worshipped.

In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.

In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.

In America the President reigns for four years and journalism governs forever and ever.

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

In America, the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever.

In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.

In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilization.

In married life affection comes when people thoroughly dislike each other.

In married life three is company and two is none.

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.

In my young days, Miss Worsley, one never met any one in society who worked for their living. It was not considered the thing.

In spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and the screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisect, in spite of Keble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford still remains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are life and art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one.

In the old day men had the rack; now they have the press.

In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself.

In this world, there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Industry is the root of all ugliness.

Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.

It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.

It is a very dangerous thing to listen. If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

It is always the unreadable that occurs.

It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.

It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

It is he who has broken the bond of marriage -- not I. I only break its bondage.

It is most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to his wife in public. It always makes people think that he beats her when they are alone.

It is not unbecoming for a man to seem like a child, in that he can recognize cynicism; only then will he understand the true nature of England.

It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.

It is only the gods who taste of death. apollo has passed away, but Hyacinth, whom men say he slew, lives on. Nero and Narcissus are always with us.

It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.

It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.

It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection; through Art and Art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

It is very easy to endure the difficulties of one's enemies. It is the successes of one's friends that are hard to bear.

It is very painful for me to be forced to speak the truth. It is the first time in my life that I have ever been reduced to such a painful position, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of the kind.

It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.

It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.

It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.

It takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing.

It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes.

It's absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.

It's perfectly scandalous the amount of bachelors who are going about society. There should be a law passed to compel them all to marry within twelve months.

Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.

Land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

Life is a pilgrimage. The wise man does not rest by the roadside inns. He marches direct to the illimitable domain of eternal bliss, his ultimate destination.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.

Life is never fair...And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.

Life is too important to be taken seriously.

Life would be dull without them.

Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic

Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm we had crossed each other's way: but we made no sign, we said no word, we had no word to say.

Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac.

London is full of women who trust their husbands. One can always recognise them. They look so thoroughly unhappy.

London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don’t know.

London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable.

Looking good and dressing well is a necessity. Having a purpose in life is not.

Lord Illingworth may marry any day. I was in hopes he would have married Lady Kelso. But I believe he said her family was too large. Or was it her feet? I forget which.

Lord Illingworth: All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. Mrs. Allonby: No man does. That is his.

Lord Illingworth: American novels.

Lord Illingworth: They go to America.

Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two.

Lying for a monthly salary is, of course, well known in Fleet Street.

Man always wants to be a woman's first love - Women like to be a man's last romance.

Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act according with the dictates of reason.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.

Manners before morals!

Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.

Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.

Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.

Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man's last romance.

Men always want to be a woman's first love. Women have a more subtle instinct: What they like is to be a man's last romance.

Men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.

Men become old, but they never become good.

Men know life too early.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.

Misfortunes one can endure -- they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults -- Ah! there is the sting of life.

Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt to people whom we personally dislike.

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

More than half modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

More women grow old nowadays through the faithfulness of their admirers than through anything else.

Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualification.

Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

Most women in London, nowadays, seem to furnish their rooms with nothing but orchids, foreigners, and French novels.

Mothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chap’s bills and don’t bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills.

Mr. Whistler always spelt art, and we believe still spells it, with a capital "I."

Mrs. Allonby: It ends with Revelations.

Mrs. Allonby: Or the want of it in the man.

Murder is always a mistake – one should never do anything one cannot talk about after dinner.

Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.

Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.

Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.

My dear young lady, there was a great deal of truth, I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important.

My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.

My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.

My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.

Never buy a thing you don't want merely because it is dear.

Never speak disrespectfully of society. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

Newspapers have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon.

Niagara Falls is the bride's second great disappointment.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist has ethical sympathies. an ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No civilised man ever regrets a pleasure, just as no uncivilised man ever knows what a pleasure is.

No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime. Vulgarity is the conduct of others.

No gentleman ever has any money.

No gentleman ever takes exercise.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are, if he did he would cease to be an artist.

No life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested.

No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

No man should have a secret from his wife; she invariably finds out.

No married man is ever attractive except to his wife.

No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on.

None of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. There is something positively brutal about the good temper of most modern men.

Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly.

Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.

Nothing makes one so vain as being told one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope.

Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman.

Nothing succeeds like success.

Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance.

Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.

Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

Nowadays people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.

Nowdays, all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men.

Of course I plagiarize. It is the privilege of the appreciative man!

Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

Oh, duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself.

Oh, I like tedious, practical subjects. What I don't like are tedious, practical people. There is a wide difference.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband's dinners.

Once at least in his life each man walks with Christ to Emmaus.

Once can survive everything nowadays, except death.

One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.

One can only give an unbiased opinion about things that do not interest one, which is no doubt the reason an unbiased opinion is always valueless. The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.

One can survive anything nowadays, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation.

One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

One must have some occupation nowadays. If I hadn’t my debts I shouldn’t have anything to think about.

One regrets the loss of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.

One should always absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember the details. Details are always vulgar.

One should always be a little improbable.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

One should always be in love.That is the reason one should never marry.

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

One should be thankful that there is any fault of which one can be unjustly accused.

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

One should never listen. To listen is a sign of indifference to one's hearers.

One should never make one's debut in a scandal. One should reserve that to give interest to one's old age.

One should never take sides in anything, Mr. Kelvil. Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore.

One should never trust a woman who tells her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell anything.

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.

One should read everything. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

One's own soul, and the passions of one's friends – those were the fascinating things in life.

One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

Only great masters of style can succeed in being obtuse.

Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last.

Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succeed there.

Only the great masters of style ever succeeded in being obscure.

Only the shallow know themselves.

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

People fashion their God after their own understanding. They make their God first and worship him afterwards.

People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.

People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately.

People who want to say merely what is sensible should say it to themselves before they come down to breakfast in the morning, never after.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.

Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands.

Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.

Pleasure is the only thing one should live for. Nothing ages like happiness.

Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about.

Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.

Popularity is the only insult that has not yet been offered to Mr. Whistler.

Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else.

Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune.

Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas.

Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.

Punctuality is the thief of time.

Punctuality is the thief of time. Wilde I never travel without my diary. One should always have Something sensational to read in the train.

Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.

Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?

Really, now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.

Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

Scandal: gossip made tedious by morality.

Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it.

Sentimentality is merely the Bank Holiday of cynicism.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.

She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.

She had more than once changed her husband; indeed, Debrett credits her with three marriages; but as she had never changed her lover, the world had long ago ceased to talk scandal about her.

She is absolutely inadmissible into society. Many a woman has a past, but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and that they all fit.

She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.

She looks like a woman with a past. Most pretty women do.

She who hesitates is won.

She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.

Sin is the only real colour element left in modern life.

Skepticism is the beginning of Faith.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.

Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.

Society, civilised society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go

Something was dead in each of us, And what was dead was Hope.

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

Sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of sympathy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain.

Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore.

Talk to a woman as if you loved her, and to a man as if he bored you.

Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of music -- his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of painting -- that which he himself employs. The aesthetic critic, and the aesthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and all modes. It is to him that Art makes her appeal.

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.

That is the reason they are so pleased to find out other people’s secrets. It distracts public attention from their own.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

The ages live in history through their anachronisms.

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for.

The aim of love is to love: no more, and no less.

The American father is never seen in London. He passes his life entirely in Wall Street and communicates with his family once a month by means of a telegram in cipher.

The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public.

The artist must educate the critic.

The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.

The best way to make children good is to make them happy.

The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

The brave man with a sword!

The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.

The cities of America are inexpressibly tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their ''Hub,'' as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustles and bores. Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in New York one could not dwell there.

The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.

The condition of perfection is idleness; The aim of perfection is youth.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

The English country gentleman galloping after a fox – the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water.

The English public take no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is obscene.

The English public, as a mass, takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.

The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach.

The extraordinary thing about the lower classes in England is that they are always losing their relations. They are extremely fortunate in that respect.

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

The fact is, you have fallen lately, Cecily, into a bad habit of thinking for yourself. You should give it up. It is not quite womanly... men don't like it.

The final mystery is oneself.

The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered.

The General was essentially a man of peace, except in his domestic life.

The General was essentially a man of peace, except of course in his domestic affairs.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.

The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion.

The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passion are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.

The greatest of all sins is stupidity.

The history of women is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.

The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.

The Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilised being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.

The longer I live the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us.

The man who calls a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.

The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.

The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.

The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner of later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.

The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.

The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.

The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

The one duty we owe to history is to re-write it .

The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.

The only charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

The only duty we owe history is to rewrite it.

The only thing one can do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

The only thing that consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always gives himself for doing them.

The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by always being absolutely over-educated.

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else, if she is plain.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.

The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.

The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.

The poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts.

The problem with conversation is that the clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish, and unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality.

The reason we are so pleased to find other people's secrets is that it distracts public attention from our own.

The reason why we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.

The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.

The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of Society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members.

The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.

The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art.

The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.

The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.

The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful.

The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women merely adored.

The supreme object of life is to live. Few people live. It is true life only to realize one's own perfection, to make one's every dream a reality.

The suspense is terrible, I hope it will last.

The terror of society is the basis of morals.

The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true.

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.

The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.

The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them.

The way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

The world has always laughed at its own tragedies, that being the only way in which it has been able to bear them. and that, consequently, whatever the world has treated seriously belongs to the comedy side of things.

The world has been made by fools that wise men should live in it.

The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

The world is simply divided into two classes – those who believe the incredible, like the public – and those who do the improbable.

The worst form of tyranny the world has ever known the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.

The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.

The youth of america is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years. To hear them talk one would imagine that they were in their first childhood. as far as civilisation goes they are in their second.

The youth of the present day are quite monstrous. They have absolutely no respect for dyed hair.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

There are only two ways a man can reach civilisation. One is by being cultured, the other is by being corrupt.

There are people who say I have never really done anything wrong in my life; of course, they only say it behind my back.

There are terrible temptations which it requires strength and courage to yield to.

There are things that are right to say, but that may be said at the wrong time and to the wrong people.

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.

There is a fatality about all good resolutions. They are invariably made too soon.

There is a good deal to be said for blushing, if one can do it at the proper moment.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons worth painting; though many of them would be better for a little white-washing.

There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.

There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

There is no reason why a man should show his life to the world. The world does not understand things.

There is no sin except stupidity.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

There is no such thing as morality or immorality in thought. There is immoral emotion.

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.

There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.

There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.

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

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.

There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.

There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.

They afterwards took me to a dancing saloon where I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice- 'Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.'

They are awfully expensive. I can only afford them when I'm in debt.

They are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.

They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.

Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity.

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.

Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.

Time is waste of money.

To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self. Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

To be modern is the only thing worth being nowadays.

To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.

To be popular one must be a mediocrity.

To be premature is to be perfect.

To be really medieval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul.

To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.

To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

To get back to one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.

To get into the best society, nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people – that is all!

To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.

To have been well brought up is a great drawback nowadays. It shuts one out from so much.

To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.

To make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.

To many, no doubt, he will seem blatant and bumptious, but we prefer to regard him as being simply British.

To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

True friends stab you in the front.

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin, but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.

Vulgarity is the conduct of other people, just as falsehoods are the truths of other people.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body.

We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful.

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim -- objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.

We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

We women adore failures. They lean on us.

We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.

What between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That's all that can be said about land.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?

What is said of a man is nothing. The point is, who says it.

What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics.

What is the difference between literature and journalism? – Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read. That is all.

What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities. Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

What seem to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

Whatever harsh criticisms may be passed on the construction of her sentences, she at least possesses that one touch of vulgarity that makes the whole world kin.

Whatever music sounds like, I am glad to say that it does not sound in the smallest degree like German.

When a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

When a man has once loved a woman, he will do anything for her, except continue to love her.

When a man says that he has exhausted Life, one knows that life has exhausted him.

When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.

When good Americans die they go to Paris.

When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know it is.

When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.

When one pays a visit it is for the purpose of wasting other people's time, not one's own.

When people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.

When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven in its infinite mercy sends them a nice plump missionary.

Whenever people agree with me, I always feel that I must be wrong.

Where there is no extravagance there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding.

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.

While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first is personality, which no one should copy; the second is perfection, which all should aim at.

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

Who is that man over there? I don't know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him! -- hang him!

Who, being loved, is poor?

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

Wicked women bother one. Good women bore one. That is the only difference between them.

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attraction of others.

With an evening coat and a white tie, anybody, even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for being civilized.

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

Woman's first duty in life is to her dressmaker. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered.

Women are a fascinatingly wilful sex. Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.

Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.

Women give to men the very gold of their lives. But they invariably want it back in small change.

Women have a much better time than men in this world. There are far more things forbidden to them.

Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.

Women inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces, and always prevent us from carrying them out.

Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.

Women represent the triumph of matter over mind; men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them.

Women who have common sense are so curiously plain.

Women's styles may change but their designs remain the same.

Work is a refuge of people who have nothing better to do.

Work is the curse of the drinking class.

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.

Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art.

Yes; the public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

You must not find symbols in everything you see. It makes life impossible.

You should study the Peerage. It is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.

Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot.

Young people nowadays imagine that money is everything, and when they grow older they know it.

Your friendship is dearer to me than any fame or reputation.

Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile.