Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Yet each man kills the thing he lovesBy each let this be heardSome do it with a bitter lookSome with a flattering wordThe coward does it with a kissThe brave man with a sword
One should always be in love. That’s the reason one should never marry.
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
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 a richness to life that nothing else can bring.
It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love
My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly,madly!You didn’t know it then-you know it now.
When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for.
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.
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 own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.
I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life.
Imagination is a quality that was given to man compensate him from whats not. The sense of humor was given to console him from what is.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
I like men who have a future and women who have a past.
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
It is perfectly monstrous,’ he said, at last, ‘the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.
In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.
The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.
If you don’t get everything you want, think of the things you don’t get that you don’t want.
Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.
Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything.Yes, murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; and when they grow older they know it.
Why can’t these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women.It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.
I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.
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.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.
You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.
LORD ILLINGWORTH: The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.MRS ALLONBY: And the body is born young and grows old. That is life’s tragedy.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.
She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
Women have no appreciation of good looks-at least, good women have not.
Well, 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.
Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man.
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.
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.
But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.
With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.
Die Welt ist von Narren geschaffen, damit Weise in ihr Leben.
Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.
The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love – that’s the reason one should never marry.
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.
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.
He is fairer than the morning star, and whiter than the moon. For his body I would give my soul, and for his love I would surrender heaven.
something was dead in each of us,and what was dead was hope.
Oh, brothers! I don’t care for brothers. My elder brother won’t die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.
For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.
My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.
It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.
The mimicry of passion is the most intolerable of all poses.
With slouch and swing around the ringWe trod the Fools’ Parade!We did not care: we knew we wereThe Devils’ Own Brigade:And shaven head and feet of leadMake a merry masquerade.
In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.
When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.
Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life…I have put only my talent into my works.
Behind the perfection of a man’s style, must lie the passion of a man’s soul.
If you want to be a doormat you have to lay yourself down first.
Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.
Christ did not die to save people, but to teach people how to save each other. This is, I have no doubt, a grave heresy, but it is also a fact.
For what is truth? In matters of relogion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one’s last mood.
For what is truth? In matters of religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one’s last mood.
The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.
The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.
What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise
To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.
Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.
LADY BRACKNELLTo speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
That is the worst of women. They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they meet us, they don’t love us at all. They like to find us quite irretrievably bad, and to leave us quite unattractively good.
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.American novels, answered Lord Henry.
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success.
Friendship…is not something you learn in school,but if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship you really haven’t learned anything.
I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.
It’s an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco.It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world
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. And that makes me quite nervous.
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating- people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
It would be unfair to expect other people to be as brilliant as oneself.
In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.
Yes: I am a dreamer. For 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.
The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
He wants to enslave you.”I shudder at the thought of being free.
Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses.
People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it’s impossible to count them accurately.
He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one’s eyes, and does not look at him.
Well I won’t argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things.That is exactly what things were originally made for.
I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods – they worship us and keep bothering us to do something.
Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am?
If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.
A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied
Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.
I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting.
Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.
Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
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.
Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don’t think it right.
She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious.
A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.
Give women the right opportunities and they are capable of everything.
Men always want to be a woman’s first love, -women want to be a man’s last romance.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.
I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.
There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
It is rarely in the world’s history that its ideal has been one of joy and beauty. The worship of pain has far more often dominated the world.
Beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. World’s had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow…
…art had no moral responsibility. Art, he argued, should strive only to be a beautiful object entirely separate from its creator.
The world loves the Saint, and Christ loves the sinner.
To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.
What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.
So with curious eyes and sick surmiseWe watched him day by day,And wondered if each one of usWould end the self-same way,For none can tell to what red HellHis sightless soul may stray.
The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
And the young Fisherman said to himself: “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.
And how delightful other people’s emotions were!-much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. One’s own soul, and the passions of one’s friends-those were the fascinating things in life.
Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.
Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.
When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss Art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss Money
An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.
What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.
Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.
God and other artists are always a little obscure…..
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.
A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.
Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself.She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.
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.All art is quite useless.
It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
To call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote ‘King Lear.
If something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts, art will become sterile and beauty will pass away from the land.
I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.
You talk books away,” he said; “why don’t you write one?” “I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal.
As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.
The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence.
The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.
The ages live in history through their anachronisms.
The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it.
That is one of the great secrets of life 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.
It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.
It is in the brain that the poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings.
The evolution of man is slow. The injustice of men is great.
The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
Of course married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worse habits.
It is he who has broken the bond of marriage – not I. I only break its bondage.
Music makes one feel so romantic – at least it always gets on one’s nerves – which is the same thing nowadays.
If one plays good music, people don’t listen, and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.
Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?I didn’t think it polite to listen, sir.
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.
After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.
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.
To begin with, I dined there on Monday, and once a week is quite enough to dine with one’s own relations.
Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.
From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power.
We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?
You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.
Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. 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.
Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they’re better.
It is simply expression, as Henry says, that gives reality to things.
Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known
Life at times loses its sense of reality; it appears to us like a weird, optical illusion – a phantasmagoric bubble that will disappear at the slightest breath.
Perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place.
So overjoyed were they at their deliverance that they laughed aloud, and the Earth seemed to them like a flower of silver, and the Moon like a flower of gold.
I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows.
The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice.
Outside the family circle, papa, I’m glad to say, is entirely unknown. I think that is quite as it should be. The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man.
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions.
It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us.
I’m a man of simple tastes. I’m always satisfied with the best.
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.
Literature always anticipates life. It doesn’t copy it but moulds it to it’s purpose.
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.
I wrote when I did not know life;now that I know life, I have no more to say.
Journalism is unreadable, and literature is unread.
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 difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read
Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .
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.
Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.
And, certainly to him Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
You came to me to learn the Pleasure of Life and the Pleasure of Art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sorrow and its beauty.
You can have your secret as long as I have your heart[.]
It is only when one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it
A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.
How pale the Princess is! Never have I seen her so pale. She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver.
All I want to do now is look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to.
I give the truths of to-morrow.””I prefer the mistakes of today.
You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing. You lost life’s secret.
The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination,made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.
In the strangely simple economy of the world people only get what they give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate the mere outward of things and feel pity, what pity can be given save that of scorn?
That’s always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people would want to be around someone because they’re pretty. It’s like picking your breakfast cereals based on color instead of taste.
I would sooner lose my best friend than my worst enemy. To have friends, you know, one need only be good-natured; but when a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him.
Are ALL men bad?Oh, all of them, my dear, all of them, without any exception. And they never grow any better. Men become old, but they never become good..
I have a business appointment that I am anxious… to miss.
If it was my business, I wouldn’t talk about it. It is very vulgar to talk about one’s business. Only people like stockbroker’s do that, and then merely at dinner parties.
The one charm about the past is that it is the past.
MISS PRISMMemory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.
I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn’t write them down, I should not probably forget all about them.
Silently we went round and round,And through each hollow mindThe memory of dreadful thingsRushed like a dreadful wind,And horror stalked before each man,And terror crept behind.
The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.
Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one’s prejudices.
My dear fellow, it isn’t easy to be anything nowadays. There’s such a lot of beastly competition about.
In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.
To realise one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he’ll tell you the truth
Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself?
One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.
To become a spectator of one’s own life is to escape the suffering of life.
It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.
Failure is only the name that we give to our mistakes.”-Oscar Wilde
But somehow, I feel sure that if I lived in the country for six months, I should become so unsophisticated that no one would take the slightest notice of me.
The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.
People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.
Lord Henry smiled. “He gives you good advice, I suppose. People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.
You are not listening to a word I am saying . . . and I am making the most delightful plans for your future.
But neither milk-white rose nor red May bloom in prison air;The shard, the pebble, and the flint, Are what they give us there:For flowers have been known to heal A common man’s despair.
Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What (women) like is to be a man’s last romance.
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance.
You don’t seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.
The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.
It is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.
A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.
And when wind and winter hardenAll the loveless land,It will whisper of the garden,You will understand.
Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves?
Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.
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.
Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.
And to the little Squirrel who lived in the fir-tree, and was lonely, he said, ‘Where is my mother?’ And the Squirrel answered, ‘Thou hast slain mine. Dost thou seek to slay thine also?
As for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.
Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.
To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead.
Men always want to be a woman`s first love – women like to be a man`s last romance.
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
You come down here to console me. That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. How like a sympathetic person!
Moral grounds are always the last refuge of people who have no sense of beauty.
Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian…I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does. I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes.
The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plentitude.
The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem to life.
Ah! Happy they whose hearts can breakAnd peace of pardon win!How else may man make straight his pathAnd cleanse his soul from sin?How else but through a broken heartMay the Lord Christ enter in?
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
One could never pay too high a price for any sensation.
One knows so well the popular idea of health: the English country gentleman galloping after a fox – the unspeakable in full pursuit of the unbeatable.
Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life.
You are perfectly right in making some slight alteration. Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.
loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.
Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is asacrament that should be taken kneeling.
If a woman cannot make her mistakes charming, she is only a female.
The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.
The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
Dear little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery.
If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart.
When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.
And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, ‘You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.
The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.
But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.
If I could get back my youth, I’d do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable.
Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.
The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder.
What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts.
Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art.
you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even stir my curiosity.
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
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.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself.
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping.
It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one’s worship into words.
Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character.
Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.
The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.
I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.
I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.
The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.
Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things
A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent
Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.
In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.
It is very wrong to kill any one[.]””Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!
JACKYou’re quite perfect, Miss Fairfax.GWENDOLENOh! I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for developments, and I intend to develop in many directions.
Ugh!’ snarled the Wolf, as he limped through the brushwood with his tail between his legs, ‘this is perfectly monstrous weather. Why doesn’t the Government look to it?
I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
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.
Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on… The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plentitude.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live.
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.
Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction.
What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.
I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously propose that an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that each citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours.
Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.
I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.
The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.
My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.
I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.
The well bred contradict other people. the wise contradict themselves.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.
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.
All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.
I don’t want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice.
How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?
It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain.It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.
I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.
JACKYour duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNONMy duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.
In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in my own small way.I don’t think you should be so proud of that, though I am sure it must have been very pleasant.
LADY BRACKNELLI had some crumpets with Lady Harbury, who seems to me to be living entirely for pleasure now.ALGERNONI hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief.
I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb.
The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives.
One has a right to judge a man by the effect he has over his friends.
I quite agree with Dr. Nordau’s assertion that all men of genius are insane, but Dr. Nordau forgets that all sane people are idiots.
And Beauty is a form of Genius – is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation.
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame. There is no sin except stupidity.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.
One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.
It is the duty of every father… to write fairy tales for his children.
Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them
Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.
Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid.Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shillyshallying with the question is absurd.
Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us.
It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world
She…can talk brillantly upon any subject provided she knows nothing about it.
I want to be good. I can’t bear the idea of my soul being hideous.
I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question – simple curiosity.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me, before.’A dream of form in days of thought:
You told me you had destroyed it.””I was wrong. It has destroyed me.
because to influence a person is to give one’s own soul.
There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.
What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!” exclaimed Lord Henry. ” A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.
My Salome is a mystic the sister of Salammbô a Saint Thérèse who worships the moon.
Anybody can have common sense, povided that they have no imagination
. . . try as we may we cannot get behind things to the reality. And the terrible reason may be that there is no reality in things apart from their appearances.
But do let us go. Dorian, you must not stay here any longer. It is not good for one’s morals to see bad acting.
He repeated her name over and over again. The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.
I will love you always, because you will always be worthy of love.
I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about.
Indeed, as a rule, everybody turns out to be somebody else.
Ah! that is the great thing in life, to live the truth.
I have forgotten all about my school days. I have a vague impression that they were detestable.
There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature.
There was something tragic in a friendship so colored by romance.
this woman is a genius in the day time and a beauty at night
Never mind what I say. I am always saying what I shouldn’t say. In fact, I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.
My doctor says I must not have any serious conversation after seven [o’clock]. It makes me talk in my sleep.
The pure and simple truth is, the truth is never pure and simple.
No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
The drawback of stealing a thing, is that one never knows how wonderful the thing that one steals is.
For his mourners will be outcast menAnd outcasts always mourn…
Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.
Yet ruled he not long, so great had been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his testing, for after the space of three years he died. And he who came after him ruled evilly.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses.
Niagara … is the first disappointment in the married life of many Americans who spend their honeymoon there.
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.
There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time; the reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives a terribly long time after the answer.
Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness.
I must confess that most modern mysticism seems to me to be simply a method of imparting useless knowledge in a form that no one can understand
Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too.
After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.
JACK: I will be back in a few moments, dear Canon. Gwendolen! Wait here for me!GWENDOLEN: If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood
I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.
They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.
it is a marvel that those red-roseleaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing.
Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.
I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.
A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool.
I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five
The Number our envious Persons, confirmation our capability.
Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.
The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban’s enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban’s fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror.
Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.
The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.
Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable
One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist.
For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.
It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiassed opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.
Everything is going to be fine in the end. If it’s not fine it’s not the end.
I love to talk about nothing. It’s the only thing I know anything about.
I don’t like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.
Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.
(A country where) the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.
When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
Good artists exist simply in what they make and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.
Every great man nowadays has his disciples and it is always Judas who writes the biography.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
Always! That is the dreadful word … it is a meaningless word too.
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
At every single moment of one’s life one is going to be no less than what one has been.
The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
If England treats her criminals the way she has treated me she doesn’t deserve to have any.
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.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
For he who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die.
Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
Education is an admirable thing but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
He hasn’t an enemy in the world and none of his friends like him.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Things are in their essence what we choose to make them. A thing is according to the mode in which one looks at it.
Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.
I can believe anything provided it is incredible.
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever do they forgive them.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Always forgive your enemies nothing annoys them so much.
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion enmity worship love but no friendship.
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness.
We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants and the other is getting it.
When a love comes to an end weaklings cry efficient ones instantly find another love and the wise already have one in reserve.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has the right to blame us.
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 hope you have not been leading a double life pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves and fibers and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Men know life too early women know life too late.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.
Men marry because they are tired women because they are curious: both are disappointed.
Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
When I was young I thought money was the most important thing in life. Now that I’m old – I know it is.
Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
To become the spectator of one’s own life is to escape the suffering of life.
Pessimist – one who when he has the choice of two evils chooses both.
To most of us the real life is the life we do not lead.
A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible not the invisible.
A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written.
A true gentlemen is one who is never unintentionally rude.
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
I know not whether laws be right Or whether laws be wrong All that we know who lie in gaol Is that the wall is strong And that each day is like a year A year whose days are long.
Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
It is not the prisoners who need reformation it is the prisons.
The only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
To be on the alert is to live to be lulled into security is to die.
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.
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple and the simple thing is the right thing.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly.
To get into the best society nowadays one has either to feed people amuse people or shock people.
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.
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.
Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can you want?
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
As long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar it will cease to be popular.
As long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar it will cease to be popular.
Ordinary riches can be stolen real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
There is no such thing as romance in our day women have become too brilliant nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman.
This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again.
I’ve put my genius into my life I’ve only put my talent into my works.
Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one’s self over poetry is an honour.
Perhaps one never seems so much at one’s ease as when one has to play a part.
But you don’t really mean to say that you couldn’t love me if my name wasn’t Ernest?GWENDOLEN: But your name is Ernest.JACK: Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you couldn’t love me
Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.
If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.
To influence a person is to give him one’s own soul.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
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.
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.
Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
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.
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
Some cause happiness wherever they go others whenever they go.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.
If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.
The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.
Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination.
The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
An excellent man he has no enemies and none of his friends like him.
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life now that I am old I know that it is.
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.
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.
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.
Society exists only as a mental concept in the real world there are only individuals.
If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.