Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.

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

Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect.

I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

Philanthropy [has become] simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures.

The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.