Oscar Wilde

To be popular one must be a mediocrity.\' \'Not with Women,\' said the duchess, shaking her head; \'and women rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.\' \'It seems to me that we never do anything else,\' murmered Dorian.

You told me you had destroyed it.\' \'I was wrong. It has destroyed me.

I have a simple taste, only the best.

Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself. Sometimes I am so clever I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.

Thinking is wonderful, but the experience is even more wonderful.

Only good questions deserve good answers.

Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, Destiny never closed her accounts.

When asked what he thought of sports, Oscar Wilde replied, \'I approve of any activity that requires the wearing of special clothing.

An egg is always an adventure; the next one may be different.

George Moore wrote brilliant English until he discovered grammar.

Good intentions are invariably ungrammatical.

If God wished to punish us, all he would need to do would be to answer our prayers.

The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.

The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity.

The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want.

We Irish will never achieve anything; but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks

Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.

Now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.

Fantastic shadows of birds

The birds did not understand a single word of what he was saying, but that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

I find I have, and a heart doesn't suit me, Windermere. Somehow it doesn't go with modern dress. It makes one look old.

LADY BRACKNELL Algernon is an extremely, I may almost say an ostentatiously, eligible young man. He has nothing, but he looks everything. What more can one desire?

Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.

I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.

JACK Your duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNON My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.

And now, dear Mr. Worthing, I will not intrude any longer into a house of sorrow. I would merely beg you not to be too much bowed down by grief. What seem to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise. This seems to me a blessing of an extremely obvious kind.