"Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner."

"Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience."

"There is no Mystery so great as Misery."

"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."

"I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours."

"I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about."

"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."

"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."

"People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us."

"I am too fond of reading books to care to write them."

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."

"If England treats her criminals the way she has treated me she doesn't deserve to have any."

"He hasn't an enemy in the world and none of his friends like him."

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

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

"It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things."

"Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."

"The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure."

"The greatest events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow out in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the burden of their memory, and have anodynes against them. But the little things, the things of no moment, remain with us."

"Friendship...is not something you learn in school,but if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship you really haven't learned anything."

"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."

"The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing."

"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."

"I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel."

"It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art."

"In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer."

"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies."

"Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly."

"The moon in her chariot of pearl."

"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."

"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."

"My dear fellow, it isn't easy to be anything nowadays. There's such a lot of beastly competition about."

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

"Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.Vice and virtue are the artist's materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feelings, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectators, and not life, that art really mirrors."

"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."

"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."

"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing."

"Nothing is so aggravating than calmness."

"Bosie has insisted on stopping here for sandwiches. He is quite like a narcissus -- so white and gold. I will come either Wednesday or Thursday night to your rooms. Send me a line. Bosie is so tired: he lies like a hyacinth on the sofa, and I worship him."

"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."

"To influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for 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.."

"Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary."

"Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion."

"And when wind and winter hardenAll the loveless land,It will whisper of the garden,You will understand."

"Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders."

"The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."

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

"A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament."

"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."