Oscar Wilde

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. They a

How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.

I can resist everything except temptation.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.

I was disappointed in Niagara -- most people must be disappointed in Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

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 is personality, which no one should copy; the second is perfection, which all should aim at.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

To love oneself is the beginning of a life long romance.

One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation.

Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.

There is no sin except stupidity.

What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

Skepticism is the beginning of Faith.

I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky.

What is said of a man is nothing. The point is, who says it.

The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.

Good taste is the excuse I have given for leading such a bad life.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of music -- his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of painting -- that which he himself employs. The aesthetic critic, and the aesthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and all modes. It is to him that Art makes her appeal.

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

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

Yes; the public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.