Oscar Wilde

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

As a wicked man I am a complete failure. Why, there are lots of people who say I have never really done anything wrong in the whole course of my life. Of course they only say it behind my back.

Who is that man over there? I don't know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him!—hang him!

Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

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.

They are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.

She is absolutely inadmissible into society. Many a woman has a past, but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and that they all fit.

My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.

It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.

A kiss may ruin a human life.

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

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the two sexes.

Mr. Whistler always spelt art, and we believe still spells it, with a capital "I."

A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.

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

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

What is said of a man is nothing. The point is, who says it.

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last.

He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.

Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.

Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

I was disappointed in Niagara—most people must be disappointed in Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.

His work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.

Formerly we used to canonise our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarise them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.

Twenty years of romance makes a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage makes her look like a public building.

Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can't get into it do that.

A man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world. The future belongs to the dandy. It is the exquisites who are going to rule.

Though one can dine in New York, one could not dwell there.

I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.

The Americans are certainly hero-worshippers, and always take their heroes from the criminal classes.

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband's dinners.

The amount 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.

There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.

One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox—the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilised being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.

You should study the Peerage, Gerald. It is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.