No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.
— Oscar Wilde
Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
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.
Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.
Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
Who, being loved, is poor?
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
Everything popular is wrong.
I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
I am not young enough to know everything.
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.
Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
Hatred is blind, as well as love.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
