"I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner."

"The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world."

"It is the duty of every father... to write fairy tales for his children."

"But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think."

"Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

"I've put my genius into my life I've only put my talent into my works."

"Up to the present man has hardly cultivated sympathy at all. He has merely sympathy with pain, and sympathy with pain is not the highest form of sympathy. All sympathy is fine, but sympathy with suffering is the least fine mode. It is tainted with egotism. It is apt to become morbid. There is in it a certain element of terror for our own safety. We become afraid that we ourselves might be as the leper or as the blind, and that no man would have care of us. It is curiously limiting, too. One should sympathise with the entirety of life, not with life's sores and maladies merely, but with life's joy and beauty and energy and health and freedom."

"People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity."

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

"She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman."

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

"America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself."

"Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man."

"Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good."

"For his mourners will be outcast men. And outcasts always mourn."

"All art is quite useless."

"You come down here to console me. That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. How like a sympathetic person!"

"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."

"A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave."

"It is so easy to convince others, it is so difficult to convince oneself."

"We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language."

"When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself."

"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."

"The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life."

"As for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible."

"Indeed, as a rule, everybody turns out to be somebody else."

"When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it."

"I can believe anything provided it is incredible."

"The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming."

"How pale the Princess is! Never have I seen her so pale. She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver."

"If something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts, art will become sterile and beauty will pass away from the land."

"It is he who has broken the bond of marriage - not I. I only break its bondage."

"Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are."

"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.""I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what is it; and for that the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray."

"And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, 'You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise."

"Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority."

"Never mind what I say. I am always saying what I shouldn't say. In fact, I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood."

"Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea."

"I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."

"I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy."

"The arts that have escaped [uniformity] best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it."

"It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned."

"The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer."

"Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood."

"The Noblest form of Affection."

"What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities."

"Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes. It is well to have learned that."

"Bad artists always admire each others work."

"Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is asacrament that should be taken kneeling."

"Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating."