We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.

It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don’t mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind. -Algernon

There is something very morbid about modern sympathy with pain.

The Number our envious Persons, confirmation our capability.

The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.

Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.

Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.

I am not a Pessimist. Indeed I am not sure that I quite know what Pessimism really means. All I do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, it cannot be lived without much charity. It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of this world, whatever may...

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.

Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness.

The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.

Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.

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.

Literature always anticipates life. It doesn’t copy it but moulds it to it’s purpose.

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

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

JACKYour duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNONMy duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.

If it was my business, I wouldn’t talk about it. It is very vulgar to talk about one’s business. Only people like stockbroker’s do that, and then merely at dinner parties.

Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.

The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.

I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do – the day after.

They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

Society–civilized society, at least–is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef … Even the cardinal...

Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.

With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?

You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about…anything, which you don’t, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you. It is a public scandal the way I adore you. I have been going about for the last six months telling the whole of society that I adore you. I...

The Noblest form of Affection

Salomé, Salomé, dance for me. I pray thee dance for me. I am sad to-night. Yes, I am passing sad to-night. When I came hither I slipped in blood, which is an evil omen; and I heard, I am sure I heard in the air a beating of wings, a beating of giant wings. I...

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,...

Beauty is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight,or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will...

There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

VICOMTE DE NANJAC. And you are younger and more Cbeautiful than ever. How do you manage it?MRS. CHEVELEY. By making it a rule only to talk to per- Yfectly charming people like yourself.

But you don’t really mean to say that you couldn’t love me if my name wasn’t Ernest?GWENDOLEN: But your name is Ernest.JACK: Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you couldn’t love me then?GWENDOLEN (glibly): Ah! that is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical...

Of course to one so modern as I am, `Enfant de mon siècle,’ merely to look at the world will be always lovely. I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall...

LADY BRACKNELLThirty-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. Lady Dumbleton is an instance in point. To my own knowledge she has been thirty-five ever since she arrived at the age of forty, which was...

The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban’s enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban’s fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror.

LADY BRACKNELLI had some crumpets with Lady Harbury, who seems to me to be living entirely for pleasure now.ALGERNONI hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief.

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

You are more to me than any of them has any idea; you are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things…I think of you day and night. ~ Letter to Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Oh! 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.

Art, like Nature, has her monsters

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.

But somehow, I feel sure that if I lived in the country for six months, I should become so unsophisticated that no one would take the slightest notice of me.