Oscar Wilde

To be popular one must be a mediocrity.

To shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.

Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .

The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.

Every woman is wrong until she cries.

I won't belong to a club that accepts me as a member

At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been.

Genius is born-not paid

I know not whether Laws be right, <br />Or whether Laws be wrong; <br />All that we know who be in jail <br />Is that the wall is strong; <br />And that each day is like a year, <br />A year whose days are long.

Give me the luxuries and I can dispense with the necessities.

Love is like a war; easy to start but hard to end and you never know where it might take you.

Whenever life sucks, remember you're going to die someday.

Medievalism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its wild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its whipping with rods - Medievalism is real Christianity, and the medieval Christ is the real Christ.

The nineteenth century is a turning point in history, simply on account of the work of two men, Darwin and Renan, the one the critic of the Book of Nature, the other the critic of the books of God. Not to recognise this is to miss the meaning of one of the most important eras in the progress of the world.

God grant me the serenity to accept that people are ignorant, the courage to uphold the law when I'm hostile, & the wisdom to realize that murder is illegal.

As for borrowing Mr. Whistler's ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas I have heard him express have had reference to his own superiority as a painter over painters greater than himself.

M. Zola is determined to show that, if he has not got genius, he can at least be dull.

The gods bestowed on Max [Beerbohm] the gift of perpetual old age.

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible.

It is art, and art only, that reveals us to ourselves.

To be entirely free, and at the same time entirely dominated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life.

Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.

Fashion: by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment the universal.

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

So lets knock a couple back and make some noise

Work is the curse of the drinking class.<br />I can resist everything except temptation.<br />Moderation is a fatal thing - nothing succeeds like excess.<br />We are all of us in the gutter. But some of us are looking at the stars.

The British cook, for her iniquities, is a foolish woman who should be turned into a pillar of salt which she never knows how to use.

What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.