All Quotes

"All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction."

"A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle."

"When a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him."

"The growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing in our political life."

"He was never quite sure himself where and when he was serious."

"'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written."

"In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

"A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. [Answering the question, what is a cynic?]"

"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. [First used by Wilde in Vera; or, The Nihilists.]"

"I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not."

"What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us."

"And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

"We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language."

"It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal."

"Tread Lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow."

"Lo! with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance — And must I lose a soul's inheritance?"

"If it took Labouchere three columns to prove that I was forgotten, then there is no difference between fame and obscurity."

"And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl."

"Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood."

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."

"The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things."

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

"A poet can survive everything but a misprint."

"Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event."

"From its earliest years every American child spends most of its time in correcting the faults of its father and mother; and no one who has had the opportunity of watching an American family on the deck of an Atlantic steamer, or in the refined seclusion of a New York boarding-house, can fail to have been struck by this characteristic of their civilisation. In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience. A boy of only eleven or twelve years of age will firmly but kindly point out to his father his defects of manner or temper; will never weary of warning him against extravagance, idleness, late hours, unpunctuality, and the other temptations to which the aged are so particularly exposed; and sometimes, should he fancy that he is monopolising too much of the conversation at dinner, will remind him, across the table, of the new child's adage, 'Parents should be seen, not heard.'"

"The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition."

"Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror."

"All art is immoral."

"He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him."

"le mystère de l'amour est plus grand que le mystère de la mort."

"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."

"I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works."

"On George Bernard Shaw An excellent man: he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him."

"I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram."

"People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately..."

"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."

"I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best."

"Tell me, when you are alone with him [ Max Beerbohm ] Sphinx, does he take off his face and reveal his mask?"

"One can survive everything nowadays except death."

"He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives."

"Psycholog­y is in its infancy, as a science. I hope in the interests of Art, it will always remain so."

"I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lip."

"Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence."

"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring."

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."

"Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime."

"After the first glass you see things as you wish they were. After the second glass you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world."

"She is not a subject."

"For to disagree with three-fourths of the British public on all points is one of the first elements of sanity, one of the deepest consolations in all moments of spiritual doubt."

"God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too."