To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune.

Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.

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.

My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wise to separate. Ah! Moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me.

To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.