it is only the philistine who seeks to estimate a personality by the vulgar test of production.

musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. they always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.

nothing is so dangerous as being too modern. one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly.

the fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose. the domestic virtues are not the true basis of art.

to the philosopher women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

the only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

the only horrible thing in the world is 'ennui.' that is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.

french songs i cannot possibly allow. people always seem to think that they are improper, and either look shocked, which is vulgar, or laugh, which is worse.

it has often been made a subject of reproach against artists and men of letters that they are lacking in wholeness and completeness of nature. as a rule this must necessarily be so. that very concentration of vision and inversity of purpose which is the characteristic of the artistic temperament is in itself a mode of limitation. to those who are preoccupied with the beauty of form nothing else seems of so much importance.

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

one should sympathise with the joy, the beauty, the colour of life. the less said about life's sores the better.

you can't make people good by act of parliament—that is something.

art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and having done so passes on to other things. nature, on the other hand, forgetting that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating the effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it.

it is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

a true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. the public are to him non-existent.

one should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. a woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.

nothing is so aggravating as calmness. there is something positively brutal about the good temper of most modern men. i wonder we women stand it as well as we do.

the truth is a thing i get rid of as soon as possible. bad habit, by the way, makes one very unpopular at the club ... with the older members. they call it being conceited. perhaps it is.

my own business always bores me to death. i prefer other people's.

don't be led astray into the paths of virtue—that is the worst of women. they always want one to be good. and if we are good, when they meet us they don't love us at all. they like to find us quite irretrievably bad and to leave us quite unattractively good.

men are such cowards. they outrage every law in the world and are afraid of the world's tongue.

wicked women bother one. good women bore one. that is the only difference between them.

to know the principles of the highest art is to know the principles of all the arts.

i don't believe in the existence of puritan women. i don't think there is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered if one made love to her. it is that which makes women so irresistibly adorable.

when i am in trouble eating is the only thing that consoles me. indeed, when i am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me intimately will tell you, i refuse everything except food and drink.

when one is going to lead an entirely new life one requires regular and wholesome meals.

the soul is born old, but grows young. that is the comedy of life. the body is born young, and grows old. that is life's tragedy.

one can survive everything nowadays except death, and live down anything except a good reputation.

the past is of no importance. the present is of no importance. it is with the future that we have to deal. for the past is what men should not have been. the present is what men ought not to be. the future is what artists are.

men become old, but they never become good.

by persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. men should be more careful; this very celibacy leads weaker vessels astray.

i think that in practical life there is something about success, actual success, that is a little unscrupulous, something about ambition that is scrupulous always.

every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. what this century worships is wealth. the god of this century is wealth. to succeed one must have wealth. at all costs one must have wealth.

i love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. they have not got the charm of novelty.

moderation is a fatal thing. enough is as bad as a meal. more than enough is as good as a feast.

the english can't stand a man who is always saying he is in the right, but they are very fond of a man who admits he has been in the wrong. it is one of the best things in them.

life is simply a 'mauvais quart d'heure' made up of exquisite moments.

there is the same world for all of us, and good and evil, sin and innocence, go through it hand in hand. to shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.

married men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands and abominably conceited when they are not.

between men and women there is no friendship possible. there is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

everybody is clever nowadays. you can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. this has become an absolute public nuisance.

i don't think man has much capacity for development. he has got as far as he can, and that is not far, is it?

i am not quite sure that i quite know what pessimism really means. all i do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, cannot be lived without much charity. it is love, and not german philosophy, that is the explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation of the next.

i do not approve of anything that that tampers with natural arrogance. ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit: touch it, and the blossom is gone.

the whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. fortunately, in england, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. if it did it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in grosvenor square.

no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. it looks so calculating.

emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of life and of that practical organisation of life that we call society.

men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. modern, no less than 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 am not in favour of long engagements. they give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which i think is never advisable.

it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.

the two weak points in our age are its want of principle and its want of profile.

thirty-five is a very attractive age. london society is full of women who have of their own free choice remained thirty-five for years.

never speak disrespectfully of society. only people who can't get into it do that.

it is always painful to part with people whom one has known for a very brief space of time. the absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. but even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.

to be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

one is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

the essence of thought, as the essence of life, is growth.

what people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

in a temple everyone should be serious except the thing that is worshipped.

we are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent.

there is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.

to be in society is merely a bore, but to be out of it simply a tragedy.

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

one should never make one's début with a scandal. one should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age.

what man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply life. man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. when he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. pleasure is nature's test, her sign of approval. when man is happy he is in harmony with himself and his environment.

society often forgives the criminal, it never forgives the dreamer.

it is so easy for people to have sympathy with suffering. it is so difficult for them to have sympathy with thought.

conversation should touch on everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.

there is a luxury in self-reproach. when we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. it is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

there are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating—people who know absolutely everything and people who know absolutely nothing.

the public is wonderfully tolerant; it forgives everything except genius.

life makes us pay too high a price for its wares, and we purchase the meanest of its secrets at a cost that is monstrous and infinite.

this horrid house of commons quite ruins our husbands for us. i think the lower house by far the greatest blow to a happy married life that there has been since that terrible thing they called the higher education of women was invented.

once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not? and i don't like that. it makes men so very attractive.

experience is a question of instinct about life.

what is true about art is true about life.

one can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.

i like men who have a future and women who have a past.

women, as some witty frenchman put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.

in matters of grave importance style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

the only way to behave to a woman, is to make love to her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain.

women give to men the very gold of their lives. possibly; but they invariably want it back in such very small change.

define women as a sex? sphinxes without secrets.

what do you call a bad man? the sort of man who admires innocence.

what do you call a bad woman? oh! the sort of woman a man never gets tired of.

one can resist everything except temptation.

don't let us go to life for our fulfilment or our experience. it is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence or form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic and critical temperament.

it is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.

one can always know at once whether a man has home claims upon his life or not. i have noticed a very, very sad expression in the eyes of so many married men.

a mother who doesn't part with a daughter every season has no real affection.

to be good is to be in harmony with oneself. discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.

a really grand passion is comparatively rare nowadays. it is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. that is the one use of the idle classes in a country.

there is no secret of life. life's aim, if it has one, is simply to be always looking for temptations. there are not nearly enough of them; i sometimes pass a whole day without coming across a single one. it is quite dreadful. it makes one so nervous about the future.

all thought is immoral. its very essence is destruction. if you think of anything you kill it; nothing survives being thought of.

what is truth? in matters of religion it is simply the opinion that has survived. in matters of science it is the ultimate sensation. in matters of art it is one's last mood.

it is so easy to convert others. it is so difficult to convert oneself.

a little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

life cheats us with shadows, like a puppet-master. we ask it for pleasure. it gives it to us, with bitterness and disappointment in its train. we come across some noble grief that we think will lend the purple dignity of tragedy to our days, but it passes away from us, and things less noble take its place, and on some grey, windy dawn, or odorous eve of silence and of silver, we find ourselves looking with callous wonder, or dull heart of stone, at the tress of gold-flecked hair that we had once so wildly worshipped and so madly kissed.

there are two ways of disliking art one is to dislike it and the other to like it rationally.

there is nothing sane about the worship of beauty. it is too splendid to be sane. those of whose lives it forms the dominant note will always seem to the world to be mere visionaries.

i am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance.

a sentimentalist is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn't know the marked price of any single thing.

punctuality is the thief of time.

self-culture is the true ideal for man.

there's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. it's a thing no married man knows anything about.

no woman should have a memory. memory in a woman is the beginning of dowdiness. one can always tell from a woman's bonnet whether she has got a memory or not.

there are things that are right to say but that may be said at the wrong time and to the wrong people.

the meaning of any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the soul of him who looks at it as it was in his soul who wrought it. nay, it is rather the beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myriad meanings, and makes it marvellous for us, and sets it in some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital portion of our lives and a symbol of what we pray for, or perhaps of what, having prayed for, we fear that we may receive.

the renaissance was great because it sought to solve no social problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and individual artists and great and individual men.

in england people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. that is so dreadful of them! only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

when one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself, and one ends by deceiving others. that is what the world calls a romance.

the secret of life is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.

no artist is ever morbid. the artist can express everything.