Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.
If it took Labouchere three columns to prove that I was forgotten, then there is no difference between fame and obscurity.
It is very vulgar to talk about one's own business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then only at dinner parties.
Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore.
Pleasures may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrows cannot break it. Hearts live by being wounded.
When one has never heard a man's name in the course of one's life, it speaks volumes for him; he must be quite respectable.
It is absurd to say that there are neither ruins nor curiosities in America when they have their mothers and their manners.
Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things.
It was you I thought of all the time, I gave to them the love you did not need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs.
Every single work of art is the fulfillment of a prophecy; for every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image.
Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you will intensify its ecstasy.
Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women...merely adored.
The chin a little higher, dear. Style largely depends on the way the chin is worn. They are worn very high, just at present.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
The moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist.
I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb.
Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.
Self-denial is simply a method by which arrests his progress, and self-sacrifice a survival of the mutilation of the savage.
Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.
In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.
I don’t write this letter to put bitterness into your heart, but to pluck it out of mine. For my own sake I must forgive you.
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also the most irrelevant.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it.
Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of the world, whatever may be the explanation of the next.
And alien tears will fill for him pity's long broken urn. For his mourners will all be outcast men, and outcasts always mourn.
Personality must be accepted for what it is. You mustn't mind that a poet is a drunk, rather that drunks are not always poets.
Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They’re the only things we can pay.
What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless.
To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world. What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?
Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last.
Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight For the greatest tragedy of them all Is never to feel the burning light.
Oh, I love London Society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be.
Sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of sympathy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain.
There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation.
Twenty years of romance makes a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage makes her something like a public building.
Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.
If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.
You know we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages.
And once, or twice, to throw the dice is a gentlemanly game, But he does not win who plays with Sin in the secret house of shame
What is abnormal in Life stands in normal relations to Art. It is the only thing in Life that stands in normal relations to Art.
Just to let you know that the buffet car will be closing for stocktaking in five minutes. The next station stop is Chesterfield.
We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.
Well I won't argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things. That is exactly what things were originally made for.
I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.