Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.

I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.

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.

Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid.Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This...

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of...

The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.

He lives the poetry that he cannot write; the others write the poetry that they dare not realize.

Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense...

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid....

Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if...

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical...

I’m a man of simple tastes. I’m always satisfied with the best.

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence.

I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.

For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses.

(…) wartość idei w żaden sposób nie zależy od szczerości tego, kto ją głosi. Wprost przeciwnie; istnieje duże prawdopodobieństwo, że im bardziej jest nieszczery, tym bardziej stanowi ona czysty wytwór jego intelektu, nieskażony jego osobistymi...

Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

I quite agree with Dr. Nordau’s assertion that all men of genius are insane, but Dr. Nordau forgets that all sane people are idiots.

There is nothing like race, is there?

It is perfectly monstrous,’ he said, at last, ‘the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.

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

For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.

Realize your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and...

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.

It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity, But even a momentary separation from anyone...

To become a spectator of one’s own life is to escape the suffering of life.

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

The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.

Irony is wasted on the stupid

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane.It never is, sir.Lane, you’re a perfect pessimist.I do my best to give satisfaction, sir.

My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

My doctor says I must not have any serious conversation after seven [o’clock]. It makes me talk in my sleep.

I really don’t see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe....

I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life.

LORD ILLINGWORTH: The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.MRS ALLONBY: And the body is born young and grows old. That is life’s tragedy.

Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty!

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.