The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised.

I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.

Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.

Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well. Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta. Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.

The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity.