I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

Die Welt ist von Narren geschaffen, damit Weise in ihr Leben.

I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear....

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.

It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist’s life is that he cannot realize his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realize their ideal...

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

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

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,...

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...

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

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

What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.American novels, answered Lord Henry.

Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain...

Placerea este testul naturii, semnul ei aprobator

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious

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...

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.

Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.

One knows so well the popular idea of health: the English country gentleman galloping after a fox – the unspeakable in full pursuit of the unbeatable.

You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks.

Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.

Para la mayoría de nosotros la verdadera vida es la vida que no llevamos.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that...

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...

The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe...

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...

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied

Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art

I never saw sad men who lookedWith such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue We prisoners called the sky, And at every happy cloud that passed In such strange freedom by.

You can have your secret as long as I have your heart[.]

Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather an other chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere...

Utterly, irrevocably, lost

The post on her left was occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence, having, as he explained once to...

Ah! Happy they whose hearts can breakAnd peace of pardon win!How else may man make straight his pathAnd cleanse his soul from sin?How else but through a broken heartMay the Lord Christ enter in?

Imagino que um homem que um dia amou uma mulher fará qualquer coisa por ela exceto deixar de continuar a amá-la.

Oh! I killed Bunbury this afternoon… I mean poor Bunbury died this afternoon.What did he die of?Bunbury? Oh, he was exploded!

Of course married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worse habits.

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...

It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain.It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.