Oscar Wilde

The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not its growth and development.

Every one of course represents the spirit of his age, but there is an eternal aspect of the Spirit of every age which may be caught. To recreate the past from the mutilated fragments of the present is the task of the Historian.

More than half of modern culture depends upon what one shouldn't read.

A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world. What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?

Beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.

What consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure. Repentance is quite out of date.

I can resist anything but the temptation to make a clever witticism.

I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.

Anybody can have common sense, provided that they have no imagination.

What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society.

Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it.

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

I'm not nearly young enough to know everything

My wish isn't to mean_x000D_ everything to everyone_x000D_ but something to someone.

It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institutions of private property.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.

Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.

The moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist.

The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.