Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If people are dishonest once, they will be dishonest a second time. And honest people should keep away from them. (Lady Chiltern)
The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.
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.
When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve.
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.
All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.
Selfishness is not living your life as you wish to live it. Selfishness is wanting others to live their lives as you wish them to.
Every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim.
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.
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.
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.
Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.
All art is immortal. For emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of action is the aim of life.
Out of the unreal shadows of night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off... p 207
Mothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chap's bills and don't bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills.
Oh, don't cough, Ernest. When one is dictating one should speak fluently and not cough. Besides, I don't know how to spell a cough.
You know I have loved him always. But we are very poor. Who, being loved, is poor? Oh, no one. I hate my riches. They are a burden.
A community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurence of crime.
When asked what he thought of sports, Oscar Wilde replied, "I approve of any activity that requires the wearing of special clothing.
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.
There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.
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.
While to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.
When people talk to us about others they are usually dull. When they talk to us about themselves they are nearly always interesting.
Would you be in any way offended if I said that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection?
In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.
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.
It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institutions of private property.
The British cook, for her iniquities, is a foolish woman who should be turned into a pillar of salt which she never knows how to use.
Like two doomed ships that pass in storm we had crossed each other's way: but we made no sign, we said no word, we had no word to say.
The camera, you know, will never capture you. Photography, in my experience, has the miraculous power of transferring wine into water.
In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory; and grasp the tail that like a monstrous asp coils round your heavy velvet paws.
Sins of the flesh are nothing. They are maladies for physicians to cure, if they should be cured. Sins of the soul alone are shameful.
And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, The hand that held the steel: For only blood can wipe out blood, And only tears can heal
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.
I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering.
I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.
Well, I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.
Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.
The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone.
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.
And suddenly the moon withdraws her sickle from the lightening skies, and to her sombre cavern flies, wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze.
It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone and can be made as offensive as a brickbat.
No one wants to see a play called 'Lady Windermere's Fan'. It's going to be called 'Cocks in Frocks II' or I will find another publisher
Without order nothing can exist-without chaos nothing can evolve. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Many people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor.
For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners.
The evil that machinery is doing is not merely in the consequence of its work but in the fact that it makes men themselves machines also.