Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

It is not the prisoners who need reformation, it is the prisons.

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

With subtle and finely-wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and the sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

JACK Your duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNON My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.