one's past is what one is. it is the only way by which people should be judged.

in a very ugly and sensible age the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.

it is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is fatal.

secrets from other people's wives are a necessary luxury in modern life. so, at least, i am told at the club by people who are bald enough to know better. but no man should have a secret from his own wife. she invariably finds it out. women have a wonderful instinct about things. they discover everything except the obvious.

life holds the mirror up to art, and either reproduces some strange type imagined by painter or sculptor or realises in fact what has been dreamed in fiction.

i feel sure that if i lived in the country for six months i should become so unsophisticated that no one would take the slightest notice of me.

to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. it is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

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

i am always saying what i shouldn't say; in fact, i usually say what i really think—a great mistake nowadays. it makes one so liable to be misunderstood.

experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

the true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is.

the basis of every scandal is an absolute immoral certainty.

people talk so much about the beauty of confidence. they seem to entirely ignore the much more subtle beauty of doubt. to believe is very dull. to doubt is intensely engrossing. to be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.

every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. to be popular one must be a mediocrity.

it is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. names are everything. i never quarrel with actions, my one quarrel is with words. that is the reason i hate vulgar realism in literature. the man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. it is the only thing he is fit for.

a high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one's health or one's happiness.

there are terrible temptations that it requires strength—strength and courage—to yield to. to stake all one's life on one throw—whether the stake be power or pleasure i care not—there is no weakness in that. there is a horrible, a terrible, courage.

nowadays it is only the unreadable that occurs.

all charming people are spoiled. it is the secret of their attraction.

there is more to be said for stupidity than people imagine. personally, i have a great admiration for stupidity. it is a sort of fellow-feeling, i suppose.

all men are monsters. the only thing to do is to feed the wretches well. a good cook does wonders.

there is no such thing as an omen.

destiny does not send us heralds. she is too wise or too cruel for that.

crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.

love art for its own sake and then all things that you need will be added to you. this devotion to beauty and to the creation of beautiful things is the test of all great civilisations; it is what makes the life of each citizen a sacrament and not a speculation.

it is always worth while asking a question, though it is not always answering one.

it takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing.

with a proper background women can do anything.

chiromancy is a most dangerous science, and one that ought not to be encouraged, except in a 'tête-à-tête.'

one should never take sides in anything. taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore.

the work of art is beautiful by being what art never has been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the reflection of which its real perfection depends.

there are three kinds of despots. there is the despot who tyrannises over the body. there is the despot who tyrannises over the soul. there is the despot who tyrannises over soul and body alike. the first is called the prince. the second is called the pope. the third is called the people.

costume is a growth, an evolution, and a most important, perhaps the most important, sign of the manners, customs, and mode of life of each century.

i really don't see anything romantic in proposing. it is very romantic to be in love, but there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. why, one may be accepted. one usually is, i believe. then the excitement is all over. the very essence of romance is uncertainty.

what consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure. repentance is quite out of date.

ideals are dangerous things. realities are better. they wound, but they are better.

unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow.

shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. the loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.

an eternal smile is much more wearisome than a perpetual frown. the one sweeps away all possibilities, the other suggests a thousand.

to disagree with three-fourths of england on all points is one of the first elements of vanity, which is a deep source of consolation in all moments of spiritual doubt.

women live by their emotions and for them, they have no philosophy of life.

as long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have a fascination. when it is looked upon as vulgar it will cease to be popular.

there is only one thing worse than injustice, and that is justice without her sword in her hand. when right is not might it is evil.

we spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. well, the secret of life is in art.

the truth isn't quite the sort of thing that one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl.

if one plays good music people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

how fond women are of doing dangerous things. it is one of the qualities in them that i admire most. a woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.

englishwomen conceal their feelings till after they are married. they show them then.

moderation is a fatal thing. nothing succeeds like excess.

actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. words are perhaps the worst. words are merciless.

life is terrible. it rules us, we do not rule it.

in art there is no such thing as a universal truth. a truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true.

one's days are too brief to take the burden of another's sorrows on one's shoulders. each man lives his own life, and pays his own price for living it. the only pity is that one has to pay so often for a single fault. one has to pay over and over again, indeed. in her dealings with man destiny never closes her accounts.

pleasure is nature's test, her sign of approval. when we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.

the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. what they call their loyalty and their fidelity i call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.

better to take pleasure in a rose than to put its root under a microscope.

of shakespeare it may be said that he was the first to see the dramatic value of doublets and that a climax may depend on a crinoline.

plain women are always jealous of their husbands; beautiful women never are! they never have time. they are always so occupied in being jealous of other people's husbands.

what between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime and the duties exacted from one after one's death land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. it gives one position and prevents one from keeping it up.

a man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain. there is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a nonconformist conscience. and most women know it, i am glad to say.

it was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone and can be made as offensive as a brickbat.

a map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. and when humanity lands there it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. progress is the realisation of utopias.

what is the difference between scandal and gossip? oh! gossip is charming! history is merely gossip, but scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

all beautiful things belong to the same age.

it is personalities, not principles, that move the age.

modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. at least, some of them are. but they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. their meaning is too obvious and their method too clearly defined. one exhausts what they have to say in a very short time, and then they become as tedious as one's relations.

to know nothing about our great men is one of the necessary elements of english education.

the truth is rarely pure and never simple. modern life would be very tedious if it were either and modern literature a complete impossibility.

you may laugh, but it is a great thing to come across a woman who thoroughly understands one.

the majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism.

the number of women in london who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. it looks so bad. it is simply washing one's clean linen in public.

the chief thing that makes life a failure from the artistic point of view is the thing that lends to life its sordid security—the fact that one can never repeat exactly the same emotion.

we teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.

vulgar habit that is people have nowadays of asking one, after one has given them an idea, whether one is serious or not. nothing is serious except passion. the intellect is not a serious thing and never has been. it is an instrument on which one plays, that is all. the only serious form of intellect i know is the british intellect, and on the british intellect the illiterate always plays the drum.

it is absurd to divide people into good and bad. people are either charming or tedious.

it is only the modern that ever become old-fashioned.