Oscar Wilde

“Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one's reason; bad people stir one's imagination.”

“One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.”

“Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.”

“The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.”

“I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.”

“The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.”

“It is always the unreadable that occurs.”

“To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.”

“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

“Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”

“London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don't know.”

“In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. We tread out the grapes, another drinks the wine. We sow the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free.”

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.”

“קיימת הנאה בהאשמה עצמית. מרגע שהאשמנו את עצמנו נדמה לנו שלזולתנו אין עוד זכות להאשימנו.”

“ילדים מתחילים באהבת הוריהם. כשהם גדלים הם חורצים משפט עליהם ולפעמים סולחים להם.”

“אין ספר מוסרי או בלתי מוסרי. ספרים כתובים היטב או כתובים רע, זה הכול.”

“נשים מתגוננות בהתקפה, והתקפותיהן הופכות לכניעה פתאומית ומוזרה.”

“את החטא שחטאנו בעבר בסלידה, נחטא שוב פעמים רבות, ובחדווה.”

“לרפא את הנפש בעזרת החושים ואת החושים בעזרת הנפש.”

“יש משהו מגוחך ברגשותיהם של אלה שחדלנו מלאהוב.”