Life cheats us with shadows. We ask it for pleasure.
LADY BRACKNELLTo speak frankly, 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 sweet to dance to violinsWhen love and life are fair:To dance to flutes, to dance to lutesIs delicate and rare:
It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.
I really don't see what is so romantic about proposing. One may be accepted - one usually is, I believe - and then the excitement is ended. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
I don’t write this letter to put bitterness into your heart, but to pluck it out of mine. For my own sake I must forgive you.
I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.
Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
Do you smoke? Jack. Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. Lady Bracknell. I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is.
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to...
Christ did not die to save people, but to teach people how to save each other. This is, I have no doubt, a grave heresy, but it is also a fact.
Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.
This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again.
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness.
After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the wo...
What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.
Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.
The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.