Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast (Penguin Little Black Classics, #119)

by Oscar Wilde

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

… a poet without hysterics is rare.

Missionaries, my dear! Don’t you realize that missionaries are the divinely provided food for destitute and underfed cannibals? Whenever they are on the brink of starvation, Heaven in its infinite mercy sends them a nice plump missionary.

Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.

This grey, monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins.

It’s most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay attention to his wife in public. It always makes people think he beats her when they are alone.