Oscar Wilde

Indeed, as any one who has ever worked among the poor knows only too well, the brotherhood of man is no mere poet's dream, it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman's heart.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty!

I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.

I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.

Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.

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

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.

The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.