Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.
There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.
They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.
Better the rule of One, whom all obey, than to let clamorous demagogues betray our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.
Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.
Things are in their essence what we choose to make them. A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.
If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon.
The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.
For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.
The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.
The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.
All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised.
Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. There is something positively brutal about the good temper of most modern men.
The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable.
Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.
When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.
In England it is enough for a man to try and produce any serious, beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen.
There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.
Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.
The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.
Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons.
By the artificial separation of soul and body men have invented a Realism that is vulgar and an Idealism that is void.
Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.
I find I have, and a heart doesn’t suit me, Windermere. Somehow it doesn’t go with modern dress. It makes one look old.
At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.
Life cheats us with shadows. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us with bitterness and disappointment in its train.
The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance.
Wordsworth went to the Lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there.
I should have remembered that when one is going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome meals.
Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach thy hand, For I am drowning in a stormier sea Than Simon on thy lake of Galilee
Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you.
There is one thing worse than an absolutely loveless marriage: a marriage in which there is love, but on one side only.
Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief.
Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.
Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation.
Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!
I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art.
I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.
As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.
The only thing that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always gives himself for doing them.
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failures.
The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man That wastes and withers there.
I love the French language... it's a delightful language, especially to curse with. It's like whopping your ass with silk.
A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
The trouble with women is, that when they grow up, they turn into their mothers. The trouble with men is, that they don't.