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.

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.

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...

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...

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...

If one plays good music, people don’t listen, and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

It is simply expression, as Henry says, that gives reality to things.

There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of...

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

Nicioadata nu aprob sau dezaprob un lucru, e o atitudine absurda fata de viata. Nu suntem trimisi in lume ca sa ne exibitionam prejudecatile morale” – Dorian Gray

Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is asacrament that should be taken kneeling.

Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn’t write them down, I should not probably forget all about them.

Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

The well bred contradict other people. the wise contradict themselves.

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.

I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses.

There is no such thing as a good influence. 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...

Human life–that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and...