"Be yourself, everyone else is taken."
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
"We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks."
"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."
"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."
"Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people."
"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."
"I can resist everything except temptation."
"I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself."
"No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating."
"Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years."
"Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity."
"All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction."
"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
"She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman."
"In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst."
"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
"The real weakness of England lies, not in incomplete armaments or unfortified coasts, not in the poverty that creeps through sunless lanes, or the drunkenness that brawls in loathsome courts, but simply in the fact that her ideals are emotional and not intellectual."
"Conscience makes egotists of us all."
"Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing."
"Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him."
"Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes."
"Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies."
"The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all."
"Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are."
"There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not."
"One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing."
"We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language."
"Cultivated leisure is the aim of man."
"I love London society! I think it has immensely improved. It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be."
"There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about."
"Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects."
"If a man needs an elaborate tombstone in order to remain in the memory of his country, it is clear that his living at all was an act of absolute superfluity."
"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do."
"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike."
"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives."
"Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner."
"The Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says."
"A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her."
"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."
"We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities."
"Newspapers . . . give us the bald, sordid, disgusting facts of life. They chronicle, with degrading avidity, the sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details of the doings of people of absolutely no interest whatsoever."
"No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists."
"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."
"To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune . . . to lose both seems like carelessness."
"Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment."
"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic."
"Personality must be accepted for what it is. You mustn't mind that a poet is a drunk, rather that drunks are not always poets."
"Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong."
"In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press."
"We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments."
"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account."
"He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time."
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime."
"I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect."
"Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions."
"The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."
"One should never make one's debut with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age."
"A sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market price of any single thing."
"I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex."
"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."
"The only thing that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always gives himself for doing them."
"There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that."
"There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better."
"I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments."
"Do you really think that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to."
"The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach."
"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
"As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular."
"Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself."
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
"The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."
"In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience."
“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”
“As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.”
“Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.”
“Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”
“A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.”
“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”
“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.”
“Genius last longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over educate ourselves.”
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.”
“Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever do they forgive them.”
“The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public.”
“The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have know the kiss of sin.”
“There is no sin except stupidity.”
“Vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.”
“London is full of women who trust their husbands. One can always recognize them, they look thoroughly unhappy.”
