Why was I born with such contemporaries?
— Oscar Wilde
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
Biography lends to death a new terror.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
Only the shallow know themselves.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
There is no sin except stupidity.
I have nothing to declare except my genius.
In married life three is company and two none.
Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Women are made to be loved, not understood.
When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
I can resist everything except temptation.
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.
Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.
The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.
