If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.

Algy, you always adopt a strictly immoral attitude towards life. You are not quite old enough to do that.

Lord Illingworth told me this morning that there was an orchid there as beautiful as the seven deadly sins.

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.

It is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees. It makes life too full of terrors.

Many people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor.