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

Perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place.

Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What (women) like is to be a man’s last romance.

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...

And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem to life.

I am not young enough to know everything.

I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.

Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist.

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...

Those whom the gods love grow young.

I like men who have a future and women who have a past.

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise

I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream – I believe that the...

The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.

In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.

Eᴠᴇʀʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ɪs ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ sᴇx, ᴇxᴄᴇᴘᴛ sᴇx. Sᴇx ɪs ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴘᴏᴡᴇʀ!

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

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

One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

LADY BRACKNELLTo speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

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

The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.

Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.

It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiassed opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.

Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!

Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.

The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Nichts Interessantes ist jemals richtig.

It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is...

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...

And Beauty is a form of Genius – is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation.

Most people are boring and stupid.

MISS PRISMMemory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.

There is no Mystery so great as Misery.

The gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your...

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Niagara … is the first disappointment in the married life of many Americans who spend their honeymoon there.

To define is to limit.

Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but is hardly suitable for delicate boys.

Wisdom comes with winters

It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one’s worship into words.

There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time; the reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives...

My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved...

If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if...

But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.

Behind the perfection of a man’s style, must lie the passion of a man’s soul.

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

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its...