Oscar Wilde

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

A passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.

You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter - a girl brought up with the utmost care - to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel?

The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.

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 known the kiss of sin.

The people who have adored me-- there have not been very many, but there have been some-- have always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me.

If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things.

Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.

Selfishness is not living your life as you wish to live it. Selfishness is wanting others to live their lives as you wish them to.

And the marvellous rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart

One should never listen. To listen is a sign of indifference to one's hearers.

Without order nothing can exist-without chaos nothing can evolve. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.

Love will fly if held too lightly Love will die if held too tightly . . .

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.

Lord Illingworth told me this morning that there was an orchid there as beautiful as the seven deadly sins.

She has form," he said to himself, as he walked away through the grove - "that cannot be denied to her; but has she got feeling? I am afraid not. In fact, she is like most artists; she is all style, without any sincerity. She would not sacrifice herself for others. She thinks merely of music, and everybody knows that arts are selfish. Still, it must be admitted that she has some beautiful notes in her voice. What a pity it is that they do not mean anything, or do any practical good.