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

I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.

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...

LADY BRACKNELLThis noise is extremely unpleasant. It sounds as if he was having an argument. I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.

A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.

When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God. It is so wonderful that it...

In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.

Beauty is a form of Genius–is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark...

God and other artists are always a little obscure…..

The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.

After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.

I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.

The best way to make children good is to make them happy.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.

The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.

Perhaps one never seems so much at one’s ease as when one has to play a part.

A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them…. His eyes darkened,...

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

A flower blossoms for its own joy.

With slouch and swing around the ringWe trod the Fools’ Parade!We did not care: we knew we wereThe Devils’ Own Brigade:And shaven head and feet of leadMake a merry masquerade.

The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.Vice and virtue are the artist’s materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the...

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.

From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power.

He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels. In Alphonso’s Clericalis Disciplina a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real jacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander, the Conqueror of Emathia was said to have...

You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of color in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories...

To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous...

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately...

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live.

The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.

It’s beauty that captures your attention; personality that captures your heart..

JACK.I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few...

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

Even things that are true can be proved.

Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.

If you want to be a doormat you have to lay yourself down first.

Genie währt länger als Schönheit.

Time is a waste of money.

Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a...

Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear...

Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself?

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in...

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect by creating, or...

I don’t like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.

I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.

The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.