“No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.”
“A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.”
“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”
“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”
“Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.”
“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”
“It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.”
“All art is quite useless.”
“The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.”
“It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.”
“What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.”
“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.”
“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.”
“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.”
“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.”
“Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.”
“One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.”
“Biography lends to death a new terror.”
“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.”
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
“Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.”
“Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.”
“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.”
“I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.”
“Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.”
“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
“True friends stab you in the front.”
“An excellent man he has no enemies and none of his friends like him.”
“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
“Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”
“Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”
“I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.”
“I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”
“It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.”
“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.”
“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
“Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.”
“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”
“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.”
“If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.”
“Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.”
“The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.”
“When good Americans die they go to Paris.”
“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.”
“Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.”
“In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.”
“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”
“Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.”
“The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.”
“Some cause happiness wherever they go others whenever they go.”
“This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”
“It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.”
“The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.”
“To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.”
“Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.”
“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”
“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 is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.”
“The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.”
“I put all my genius into my life I put only my talent into my works.”
“The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.”
“One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”
“In married life three is company and two none.”
“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
“Who, being loved, is poor?”
“Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.”
“One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.”
“A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.”
“I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.”
“Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.”
“When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.”
“Hatred is blind, as well as love.”
“There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.”
“Those whom the gods love grow young.”
“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.”
“There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.”
“How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.”
“Men marry because they are tired women, because they are curious both are disappointed.”
“Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.”
“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.”
“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”
“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.”
“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.”
“Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
“It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.”
“Success is a science if you have the conditions, you get the result.”
“Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.”
“If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.”
“Society exists only as a mental concept in the real world there are only individuals.”
“I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.”
“If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.”
“The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.”
“Children begin by loving their parents after a time they judge them rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.”
“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
“As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.”
“Women are made to be loved, not understood.”
“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.”
“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”
“A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.”