Oscar Wilde - biography

Biography

Oscar Wilde is best-known for the following films:

Wilde (1997)

Oscar Wilde Quotes

“English actors act quite well, but they act best between the lines.”

“He doesn’t act on the stage - he behaves.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.”

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

“A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen.”

“He is old enough to know worse.”

“I am not young enough to know everything.”

“Men become old but they never become good.”

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

“One should never make one’s debut with a scandal; one should reserve that to give interest to one’s old age.”

“The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.”

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

“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.”

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

“Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.”

“Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.”

“Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.”

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

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

“Of course, America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.”

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

“The youth of America is their oldest tradition; it has been going on now for three hundred years.”

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

“When good Americans die they go to Paris.”

“Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions.”

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

“A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between art and nature.”

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

“All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their own peril.”

“All art is quite useless.”

“Art is the most intense form of individualism that the world has known.”

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

“It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.”

“It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”

“It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.”

“Life imitates art more than art imitates life.”

“Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.”

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

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

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

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

“There are moments when art attains almost to the dignity of manual labour.”

“There are two ways of disliking art: one is to dislike it; the other, to like it rationally.”

“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.”

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

“When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only the shallow people who do not judge by appearances.”

“No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.”

“She is a peacock in everything but beauty.”

“Few of our modern novelists dare to invent a single thing. It is an open secret that they don’t know how to do it.”

“He has never written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows.”

“Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.”

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

“More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.”

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”

“One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.”

“She looks like the de luxe edition of a wicked French novel meant especially for the English market.”

“The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden, and it ends with Revelations.”

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

“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.”

“The world reads too much to be wise and thinks too much to be beautiful.”

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

“You should study the Peerage; it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.”

“My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.”

“I beg your pardon, I didn’t recognize you - I’ve changed a lot.”

“Charity creates a multitude of sins.”

“All charming people are spoiled; it is the secret of their attraction.”

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

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

“The best way to make children is to make them happy.”

“The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.”

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

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

“The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.”

“There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.”

“Conscience makes egotists of us all.”

“Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm.”

“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!”

“If England treats her criminals the way she has treated me, she doesn’t deserve to have any.”

“Murder is always a mistake; one should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.”

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

“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.”

“You know what a woman’s curiosity is - almost as great as a man’s.”

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

“Alas, I am dying beyond my means.”

“Biography lends to death a new terror.”

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

“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.”

“One can survive everything nowadays except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.”

“Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.”

“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.”

“Action is the last refuge of those who cannot dream.”

“Dreamers can find their way by moonlight and their only punishment is that they see the dawn before the rest of the world.”

“Duty is what one expects from others.”

“On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one’s mind; it becomes a pleasure.”

“The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible; what the second duty is, no one has yet discovered.”

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

“Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.”

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

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

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

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”

“Bernard Shaw is an excellent man; he has not an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.”

“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.”

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

“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 takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.”

“The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk.”

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

“Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.”

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”

“After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relatives.”

“Brothers? Oh, I hate brothers. My older brother just doesn’t know when to die, and my younger brothers seem to do nothing but.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“Fashion is that by which the fantastic becomes for a moment universal.”

“Fashion is what one wears oneself: what is unfashionable is what other people where.”

“Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London.”

“I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.”

“Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.”

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

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

“A true friend stabs you in the front.”

“Anyone can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success.”

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

“I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”

“Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship; and it is the best ending for one.”

“Caricature is the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius.”

“Genius is born, not paid.”

“I have nothing to declare except my genuis.”

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

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

“A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.”

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

“One half of the world does not believe in God, and the other half does not believe in me.”

“Those whom the gods love grow young.”

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”

“The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married.”

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

“Hatred is blind, as well as love.”

“Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.”

“Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humour in the woman.”

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

“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.”

“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

“Imagination is a quality given to man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humaor is provided to console him from what he is.”

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

“Clever people never listen and stupid people never talk.”

“I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself and I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a word of what I’m saying.”

“To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.”

“Bad manners make a journalist.”

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

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

“Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist.”

“Modern journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.”

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

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

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

“Knowledge would be fatal, it is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things beautiful.”

“Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose.”

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

“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.”

“Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.”

“Life is too important to be taken seriously.”

“Live the wonderful life that is in you.”

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

“One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead.”

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

“The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.”

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

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

“In love, one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always ends by deceiving others; that is what the world calls a romance.”

“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 have a more subtle instinct: what they like is to be a man’s last romance.”

“One should always be in love; that is the reason one should never marry.”

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

“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.”

“The very essence of love is uncertainty.”

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

“Those who are faithless know the pleasures of love; it is the faithful who know love’s tragedies.”

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”

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

“Who, being loved, is poor?”

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

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

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

“Divorces are made in heaven.”

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

“In married life, three is company and two none.”

“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.”

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

“Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors live like married men.”

“One can always recognize women who trust their husbands; they look so thoroughly unhappy.”

“The London season is entirely matrimonial; people are either hunting for husbands or hiding from them.”

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

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

“The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.”

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

“There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman; it’s a thing no married man knows anything about.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now, when I’m old, I know it is.”

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.”

“Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”

“I don’t play accurately - any one can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.”

“I like Wagner’s music better than anybody’s; it is so loud one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.”

“If one hears bad music it is one’s duty to drown it in conversation.”

“If one plays good music, people don’t listen; if one plays bad music, people don’t talk.”

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

“The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”

“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”

“Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.”

“Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others.”

“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.”

“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.”

“Books of poetry by young writers are usually promissory notes that are never met.”

“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.”

“One man’s poetry is another man’s poison.”

“There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.”

“Truly religious people are resigned to everything, even to mediocre poetry.”

“Whistler, with all his faults, was never guilty of writing a line of poetry.”

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

“There is hardly a person in the House of Commons worth painting, though many of them would be better for a little whitewashing.”

“Like dear St. Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success.”

“The real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial.”

“Prayer must never be answered; if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes a correspondence.”

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

“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 only really humanizing influence in prison is the influence of the prisoners.”

“Vile deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air, it is only what is good in man, that wastes and withers there.”

“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”

“Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn’t there, and finding it.”

“Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.”

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

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

“The fatality of good resolutions is that they are always too late.”

“In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.”

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

“Science is the record of dead religions.”

“The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.”

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”

“He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.”

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

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

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

“Insincerity is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.”

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

“Do not speak ill of society, Algie. Only people who can’t get in do that.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“There is no sin except stupidity.”

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

“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.”

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

“Misfortunes one can endure, they come from the outside; but to suffer for one’s faults - ah! there is the sting of life.”

“Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.”

“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.”

“This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”

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

“By persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.”

“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.”

“I can resist everything except temptation.”

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”

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

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

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

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

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

“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”

“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 perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one’s back, that are absolutely and entirely true.”

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

“The only form of lying that is absolutely beyond reproach is lying for its own sake.”

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

“At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.”

“A man of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at.”

“He hasn’t a single redeeming vice.”

“Chastity is the greatest form of perversion.”

“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made.”

“Don’t be misled into the paths of virtue.”

“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.”

“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.”

“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”

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

“Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

“Wisdom comes with winters.”

“A man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably plain.”

“A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.”

“A woman begins by resisting a man’s advances, and ends by blocking his retreat.”

“A woman who cannot make her mistakes charming, is only a female.”

“A woman with a past has no future.”

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“If a woman wants to hold a man she has only to appeal to what is worst in him.”

“Modern women understand everything except their husbands.”

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

“My dear boy, no woman is a genius. They are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.”

“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age; a woman who would tell one that would tell one everything.”

“She has the remains of really remarkable ugliness.”

“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.”

“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 behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain.”

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

“There are only five women in London worth talking to, and two of these can’t be admitted into decent society.”

“Wicked women bother one; good women bore one; that is the only difference between them.”

“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 as a sex are sphinxes without secrets.”

“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 anything except the obvious.”

“Women have been so highly educated that nothing should surprise them except happy marriages.”

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

“Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods; they worship us and are always bothering us to do something for them.”

“Women’s styles may change but their designs remain the same.”

“Oh! don’t use big words. They mean so little.”

“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”

“Frank Harris is invited to all the great houses in England - once.”

“George Moore wrote brilliant English until he discovered grammar.”

“Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning; he used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.”

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

“A grand passion is the privelege of people who have nothing to do.”

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

“Being natural is simply a pose.”

“Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.”

“Everyone should keep someone else’s diary.”

“Everything popular is wrong.”

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

“I can believe anything, provided it is incredible.”

“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 don’t like principles. I prefer prejudices.”

“I have the simplest of tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”

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

“I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.”

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

“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”

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

“In the old days men had the rack; now they have the press.”

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

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

“It is always the unreadable that occurs.”

“It is an odd thing, but everyone 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 better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”

“It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give really unbiased opinions, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.”

“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.”

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

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

“Land gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up.”

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

“Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.”

“Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not.”

“Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.”

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

“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 wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to death. One or the other has to go.”

“Never buy a thing you don’t want merely because it is dear.”

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

“Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.”

“Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.”

“Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.”

“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 should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.”

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

“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”

“Only the shallow know themselves.”

“Oscar Wilde: I wish I had said that. Whistler: You will, Oscar; you will.”

“People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.”

“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.”

“Philanthropic people lose all sense of Humanity, it is their distinguishing characteristic.”

“Philanthropy is the refuge of people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures.”

“Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.”

“Questions are never indiscreet; answers sometimes are.”

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

“Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.”

“Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex.”

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

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

“The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”

“The only excuse for creating something useless is that one admires it intensely.”

“The problem with the common person is that he is so unbearably common!”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“Vulgarity is simply the conduct of others.”

“We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices.”

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

“We think we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to benefit us.”

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

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

“Whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid.”

“Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.”

“Why was I born with such contemporaries?”

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