What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.

Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one's reason; bad people stir one's imagination.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman's heart.

I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

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

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.

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

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

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

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

I can resist everything except temptation.

All art is quite useless.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

True friends stab you in the front.

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.

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.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

Yes, there is a terrible moral in 'Dorian Gray' - a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

'The Lady's World' should be made the recognized organ for the expression of women's opinions on all subjects of literature, art and modern life, and yet it should be a magazine that men could read with pleasure.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.

There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate - not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

Those whom the gods love grow young.