"Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."

"Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them."

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

"Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is [hu]man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion."

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

"Be Yourself; everyone else is already taken."

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."

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

"Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit."

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."

"I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there."

"I never travel without my diary. One must always have something sensational to read on the train."

"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."

"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power."

"A good friend will always stab you in the front."

"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."

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his."

"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."

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

"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about."

"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it."

"Who, being loved, is poor?"

"To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."

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

"The heart was made to be broken."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

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

"No good deed goes unpunished."

"I can resist anything, except temptation."

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

"Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."

"Women are made to be loved not understood."

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

"Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do."

"I have nothing to declare except my genius."

"The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last."

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

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

"Every woman is a rebel."

"I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."

"Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

"Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays."

"There is no sin except stupidity."

"After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relatives."

"The very essence of romance is uncertainty."

"Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious."

"Everything in moderation, including moderation."

"One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything."

"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing."

"In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. (Mr. Dumby, Act III)"

"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."

"All art is quite useless. "

"There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up."

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

"Youth is wasted on the young."

"I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world."

"The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death."

"This wallpaper is dreadful, one of us will have to go."

"The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for."

"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."

"Misfortunes one can endure--they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults--ah!--there is the sting of life."

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

"Only the shallow know themselves"

"I am too fond of reading books to care to write them."

"There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing."

"The world is a stage and the play is badly cast."

"Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground."

"The basis of optimism is sheer terror."

"With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy? "

"Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different."

"One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards."

"One has a right to judge a man by the effect he has over his friends."

"Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?"

"In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody."

"Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative."

"There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands."

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."

"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."

"You can never be overdressed or overeducated."

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

"I am not young enough to know everything."

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."

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