If you are going to tell people the truth, you had better make them laugh or they will kill you.

There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them.

The only thing in the world worse than being Oscar Wilde is not being Oscar Wilde.

It is awfully hard work doing nothing.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.

The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.