"Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed."

"You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one."

"Perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place."

"The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice."

"If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame."

"Alas, I am dying beyond my means."

"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much."

"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."

"Mary Farquhar, who always flirts with her own husband across the dinner-table. That is not very pleasant. Indeed, it is not even decent . . . and that sort of thing is enormously on the increase. The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public..."

"Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that one should live. If any love is shown us we should recognize that we are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved... or if that phrase is a bitter one to bear, let us say that everyone is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling.."

"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."

"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."

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

"Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope."

"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."

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

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

"Biography lends to death a new terror."

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

"I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact."

"Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself."

"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."

"Marriage is a matter for common sense.""But women who have common sense are so curiously plain, father, aren't they? Of course I only speak from heresay?""No woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all, sir. Common sense is the privilege of our sex."

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling."

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

"I will love you always, because you will always be worthy of love."

"True friends stab you in the front."

"Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods - they worship us and keep bothering us to do something."

"In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane."

"You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid."

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

"Journalism is unreadable, and literature is unread."

"But we who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments. We have nothing else to think of. Suffering - curious as it may sound to you - is the means by which we exist, because it is the only means by which we become conscious of existing; and the remembrance of suffering in the past is necessary to us as the warrant, the evidence, of our continued identity."

"One could never pay too high a price for any sensation."

"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."

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

"Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.And falsehoods the truths of other people.Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."

"Life cannot be written, life can only be lived."

"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."

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

"The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it."

"You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you."

"Man is many things, but he is not rational."

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

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

"I wrote when I did not know life;now that I know life, I have no more to say."

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

"Don't be led astray into the paths of virtue."

"Weak? Oh, I am sick of hearing that phrase. Sick of using it about others. Weak? Do you really think, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one's life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not-there is no weakness in that. There is a horrible, terrible courage. I had that courage."

"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."