Oct 16, 1854 - Nov 30, 1900
was an Irish writer and poet
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To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
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.
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.
And alien tears will fill for him Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.
My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you will intensify its ecstasy.
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.
The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.
It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadayssaying things against one, behind one's back, that are absolutely and entirely true.
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so unbearable that we are compelled to alter it every six months.
One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.
Those who are faithless know the pleasures of love; it is the faithful who know love's tragedies.
Moderation is a fatal thing. . . . Nothing succeeds like excess.
America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
She is absolutely inadmissible into society. Many a woman has a past, but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and that they all fit.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.
To love one's self is the beginning of a life-long romance.
