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- Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
- A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
- I am not young enough to know everything.
- Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
- It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
- Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.
- But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
- I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
- 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.
- Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
- The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
- One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
- One's real life is often the life that one does not lead.
- One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
- What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
- Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
- To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
- We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
- It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
- Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
- Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
- Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
- To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
- One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
- America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
- Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
- "There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing."
- I can resist anything but temptation.
- The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
- Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
- When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
- There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
- We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
- 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.
- 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.
- Wisdom comes with winters.
- Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
- At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.
- Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
- Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.
- The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
- Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
- The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.
- In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
- 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.
- Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.
- It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
- Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.
- Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
- "Action: the last resource of those who know not how to dream."
- All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
- "Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both."
- There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.
- Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
- "Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude."
- Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
- He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
- Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
- The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
- Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
- Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
- "Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal."
- "A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."
- "Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."
- "A poet can survive everything but a misprint."
- "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."
- "A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle."
- "And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
- "We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language."
- "Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do."
- "Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror."
- "All art is immoral."
- "He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him."
- "The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death."
- "On [George Bernard Shaw] An excellent man: he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him."
- "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."
- "It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."
- "Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life."
- "His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning."
- "No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist."
- "Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it."
- "Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes his biography."
- "Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived."
- "Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read."
- "The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it."
- "It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence."
- "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."
- "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."
- "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. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."
- "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."
- "No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved."
- "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."
- "All bad art is the result of good intentions."
- "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
- "Conscience and cowardice are really the same things."
- "A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
- "Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know."
- "Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love's tragedies."
- "The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it."
- "The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties."
- "Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself."
- "Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one."
- "Genius lasts longer than beauty."
- "If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat."
- "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
- "He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing."
- "It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."
- "Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation."
- "Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him."
- "I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones."
- "Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."
- "Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
- "Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed."
- "Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly."
- "When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others."
- "People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves."
- "Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes."
- "The people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failure."
- "Punctuality is the thief of time."
- "There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up."
- "Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them."
- "Her eyes caught the melody and echoed it in radiance, then closed for a moment, as though to hide their secret. When they opened, the mist of a dream had passed across them."
- "To be in love is to surpass one's self."
- "The basis of optimism is sheer terror."
- "Conscience makes egotists of us all."
- "It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution."
- "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."
- "I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."
- "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."
- "Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects."
- "A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her."
- "It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true."
- "Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved."
- "To be popular one must be a mediocrity."
- "To define is to limit."
- "A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on."
- "To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable."
- "The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."
- "Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay."
- "I can resist everything except temptation."
- "Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it."
- "I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly."
- "My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all."
- "Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship."
- "My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's."
- "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
- "In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
- "What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
- "Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."
- "What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us."
- "Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
- "The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value."
- "It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."
- "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."
- "Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer."
- "Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious."
- "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."
- "Ambition is the last refuge of the failure."
- "Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions."
- "If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out."
- "Only the shallow know themselves."
- "In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer."
- "The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything."
- "To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."
- "Mrs. Allonby: They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris. Lady Hunstanton: Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go to? Lord Illingworth: Oh, they go to America."
- "The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years."
- "The English country gentleman galloping after a fox — the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable."
- "Lord Illingworth: The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. Mrs. Allonby: It ends with Revelations."
- "Now-a-days it is only the unreadable that occurs."
- "I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living."
- "Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed."
- "I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy."
- "The growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing in our political life."
- "Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?"
- "Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone."
- "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."
- "To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."
- "An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant as the case may be."
- "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his."
- "The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!"
- "In married life, three is company, and two is none."
- "Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk."
- "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."
- "I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing."
- "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."
- "When a man does exactly what a woman expects him to do she doesn't think much of him. One should always do what a woman doesn't expect, just as one should say what she doesn't understand."
- "I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."
- "I hope you're not leading a double life, pretending to be wicked while being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy."
- "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."
- "The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable."
- "If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being immensely over-educated."
- "To 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."
- "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."
- "Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world."
- "Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is."
- "I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself."
- "Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do."
- "Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."
- "I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about."
- "Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious."
- "Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear."
- "The only possible society is oneself."
- "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."
- "However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive."
- "Oh, why will parents always appear at the wrong time? Some extraordinary mistake in nature, I suppose."
- "Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life. Mothers are different. Mothers are darlings."
- "My dear father, if we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it."
- "I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited."
- "Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion."
- "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing."
- "High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people."
- "Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
- "The fact is, that civilisation 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."
- "Charity creates a multitude of sins."
- "Closed eyes listen, afraid to see on their own. Easily influenced and simply conformed."
- "Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known."
- "Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic."
- "In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press."
- "I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse."
- "A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it."
- "It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little."
- "The supreme vice is shallowness."
- "We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour."
- "When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?"
- "Where there is sorrow there is holy ground."
- "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
- "I have nothing to declare except my genius (reputedly)."
- "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go."
