I wonder that no criminal has ever pleaded the ugliness of your city as an excuse for his crimes.

Like dear St. Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success.

What a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.

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

Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it comes into existence.

In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilization.

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.