Oscar Wilde

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

The worst form of tyranny the world has ever known the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.

He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.

Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passion are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.

Scandal: gossip made tedious by morality.

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

It is always the unreadable that occurs.

In America, the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever.

No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

Time is waste of money.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

The Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says.

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

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners.

He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Newspapers have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon.