What between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That's all that can be said about land.

The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.

As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.

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

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

I gave my genius to my life, but my talent to my art.

At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been.