"The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. "
— Oscar Wilde

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. "
— Mark Twain

"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made. "
— Oscar Wilde

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
"
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. "
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. "
— Oscar Wilde

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

"In heaven all the interesting people are missing. "
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. "
— Oscar Wilde

"I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones. "
— Oscar Wilde

"Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent."
— Henry David Thoreau

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

"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."
— Oscar Wilde

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform."
— Mark Twain

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. "
— Oscar Wilde

"'Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read."
— Mark Twain

"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence. "
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow. "
— Oscar Wilde

"I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. Don't degrade me into the position of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
— Oscar Wilde (The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde)

"Only the shallow know themselves.
"
— Oscar Wilde

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. "
— Oscar Wilde

"Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
— Mark Twain

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it. "
— Mark Twain

"The higher the building, the lower the morals."
— Noel Coward

"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right. "
— Issac Asimov

"Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth, the realities that must be grappled with. You may not like what you find. In that case you are entitled to try to change it. But do not deceive yourself as to what you do find to be the facts of the situation. "
— Bernard M. Baruch