As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.

Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.

If people are dishonest once, they will be dishonest a second time. And honest people should keep away from them. (Lady Chiltern)

The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.

I may have said the same thing before... but my explanation, I am sure, will always be different.

There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make one almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie.