Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Nothing worth knowing can be taught.

I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. ... Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.

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

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone.