"Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being helpless prey to impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, drops him, promises and betrays, and -crowning injury- inflicts on him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself."
— Paul Valéry

"Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."
— H.L. Mencken

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."
— Oscar Wilde

"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."
— Gloria Steinem

"What though the field be lost?
All is not Lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And the courage never to submit or yeild."
— Satan from John Milton's "Paradise Lost"

"The Nature of men and women -their essential nature- is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you."
— W. Somerset Maugham

"Chastity: the most unnatural of the sexual perversions."
— Aldous Huxley

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
— George Bernard Shaw

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
— Oscar Wilde

"To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability."
— Oscar Wilde

"Happiness isn't something you experience, it's something you remember."
— Oscar Levant

"I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasure. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness."
— Aldous Huxley

"Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy sunday afternoon."
— Susan Ertz