"All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril."

"It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us."

"Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable."

"She...can talk brillantly upon any subject provided she knows nothing about it."

"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."

"Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better."

"The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole."

"The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves."

"Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life."

"Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development."

"There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope."

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."

"Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness."

"Because 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 some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly -- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self."

"It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought."

"The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love - that's the reason one should never marry."

"Give women the right opportunities and they are capable of everything."

"My own business always bores me to death, I prefer other people's."

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

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

"When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers."

"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."

"She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious. Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experiences."

"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming about him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists give everything to their art, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in themselves. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures."

"I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets."

"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."

"The only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."

"Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else."

"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."

"When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss Art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss Money."

"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."

"What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul."

"I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability."

"Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!"

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

"People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame. There is no sin except stupidity."

"The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.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."

"Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is unseen, I give to what one can touch, and look at. My gods dwell in temples made with hands; and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made perfect and complete: too complete, it may be, for like many or all of those who have placed their heaven in this earth, I have found in it not merely the beauty of heaven, but the horror of hell also."

"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing."

"But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to."

"Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art."

"To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul."

"I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day-mock me horribly!"

"The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realize through that sin his true perfection."

"Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all."

"In married life three is company and two none."

"I drink to separate my body from my soul."

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

"To realise one's nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for."

"And to the little Squirrel who lived in the fir-tree, and was lonely, he said, 'Where is my mother?' And the Squirrel answered, 'Thou hast slain mine. Dost thou seek to slay thine also?"