A Woman of No Importance

by Oscar Wilde

talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.

To get into the best society, nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people

Women are pictures. Men are problems. If you want to know what a woman really means - which, by the way, is always a dangerous thing to do - look at her, don't listen to her.

Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.

a really GRANDE PASSION is comparatively rare nowadays. It is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes in a country,

You should study the Peerage, Gerald. It is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.

the world has been made by fools that wise men should live in it!

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

that the secret of life is to take things very, very easily. MRS. ALLONBY. The secret of life is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming. LADY STUTFIELD. The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived. KELVIL. The secret of life is to resist temptation, Lady Stutfield. LORD ILLINGWORTH. There is no secret of life. Life's aim, if it has one, is simply to be always looking for temptations. There are not nearly enough.

All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.

She is a woman who drags a chain like a guilty thing. She is a woman who wears a mask, like a thing that is a leper. The fire cannot purify her. The waters cannot quench her anguish. Nothing can heal her! no anodyne can give her sleep! no poppies forgetfulness! She is lost! She is a lost soul!

Mrs. Arbuthnot doesn't know anything about the wicked society in which we all live. She won't go into it. She is far too good.

What have women who have not sinned to do with me, or I with them? We do not understand each other.

robbing me, yet left me richer, so that in the mire of my life I found the pearl of price,

The sick do not ask if the hand that smooths their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.

GERALD. But what should I do? HESTER. Ask your own heart, not mine.

My heart is cold: something has broken it.

We men know life too early. MRS. ARBUTHNOT. And we women know life too late.

What sort of love is that which needs to have hate as its brother?

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever do they forgive them.

You have had a visitor. Who was it? MRS. ARBUTHNOT. [Turning round.] Oh! no one. No one in particular. A man of no importance.