Oscar Wilde

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.