Oscar Wilde

Muffins should always be eaten quite calmly, as it is the only way to eat them!

In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

Simple pleasures are the last healthy refuge in a complex world.

The English public takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.

Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching.

In England it is enough for a man to try and produce any serious, beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen.

It is absurd to say that there are neither ruins nor curiosities in America when they have their mothers and their manners.

While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first personality, which no one should copy.

Her love was trembling in laughter on her lips.

In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

It is only very ugly or very beautiful women who ever hide their faces .

I never put off till tomorrow what I can do the day after.

Imagination is imitative-the real innovation lies in criticism.

Whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid.

The only way to even approach doing something perfectly is through experience, and experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but is hardly suitable for delicate boys.

I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five

What fire does not destroy, it hardens

It was you I thought of all the time, I gave to them the love you did not need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs.

I don't know how to talk. Oh! talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.

But she is happiest alone. She is happiest alone.

My dear young lady, there was a great deal of truth; I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important.

You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. living, as you all do, on other and by them, you need at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season.

LADY STUTFIELD I adore silent men. MRS ALLONBY Oh, Ernest isn't silent. He talks the whole time. But he has got no conversation. What he talks about I don't know. I haven't listened to him for years.

LORD ILLINGWORTH What do you think she'd do if I kissed her? MRS ALLONBY Either marry you, or strike you across the face with her glove. What would you do if she struck you across the face with her glove? LORD ILLINGWORTH Fall in love with her, probably.

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

MRS ALLONBY Is she such a mystery? LORD ILLINGWORTH She is more than a mystery - she is a mood. MRS ALLONBY Moods don't last. LORD ILLINGWORTH It is their chief charm.

We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body.

Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands.

Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.