And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory; and grasp the tail that like a monstrous asp coils round your heavy velvet paws.

What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. American novels, answered Lord Henry.

The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.

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

I should have remembered that when one is going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome meals.

The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art.

Perhaps one never seems so much at ones ease as when one has to play a part.