Oscar Wilde

As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.

In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilization.

No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London.

To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love.

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.

The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.

I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception.

No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.

I would not a bit mind sleeping in the cool grass in summer, and when winter came on sheltering myself by the warm close-thatched rick, or under the penthouse of a great barn, provided I had love in my heart.

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone.

Books are never finished, They are merely abandoned.

To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.

There can be nothing more frequent than an occasional drink.

Sometimes it takes courage to give into temptation.

It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm.

No man should have a secret from his wife. She invariably finds it out.

Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.