A man who moralizes is a hypocrite, and a woman who does so is invariably plain.

LADY BRACKNELL: Do you smoke? JACK: Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. LADY BRACKNELL: I'm glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind.

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. living, as you all do, on other and by them, you need at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season.

Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything. Yes, murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; and when they grow older they know it.

It is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologize to one in private for what they have written against one in public.

Sins of the flesh are nothing. They are maladies for physicians to cure, if they should be cured. Sins of the soul alone are shameful.