Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.
. . . try as we may we cannot get behind things to the reality. And the terrible reason may be that there is no reality in things apart from their appearances.
I quite agree with Dr. Nordau's assertion that all men of genius are insane, but Dr. Nordau forgets that all sane people are idiots.
And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem to life.
The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read
Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.
The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.
Who, being loved, is poor?
In married life three is company and two none.
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.
What a silly thing Love is. It is not as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are no...
What a fuss people make about fidelity! exclaimed Lord Henry. Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are n...
The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
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.
She knew nothing but she had everything he had lost.
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.