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for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”
The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us.
It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.
“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”
Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!”
Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.”
Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot:
If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.”
Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.”
“Paradoxes are all very well in their way.
“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, History would have been different.”
punctuality is the thief of time.
Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.”
Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.”
A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes of a country.
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others.
Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one’s self over poetry is an honour.
He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice.”
“People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.”
“Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common-sense. The only artists I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a
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Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
To be in love is to surpass one’s self.
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”
And unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality.
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested.
When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.”
“Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.”
Believe me, no civilised man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilised man ever knows what a pleasure is.”
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
there is a fatality about good resolutions—that they are always made too late.
Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It always means that they have a history.
No man came across two ideal things. Few come across one.”
Society, civilised society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.
For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art.
Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.
“The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes,”
“A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.”
what fire does not destroy, it hardens.
“To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.”
There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.
“They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy.”
“To define is to limit.”
