Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

To toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still.

His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.

A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.

Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic

A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.

In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.