Quotes to inspire and reflect

Shaw has not an enemy in the world; and none of his friends like him.

Do you want to know the great drama of my life? It’s that I have put my genius into my life; all I’ve put into my works is my talent.

Ah, well, then, I suppose that I shall have to die beyond my means.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

How else but through a broken heart

And alien tears will fill for him

For he who lives more lives than one

Something was dead in each of us,

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,

I never saw a man who looked

He did not wear his scarlet coat,

You should study the Peerage, Gerald … It is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.

LORD ILLINGWORTH : The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

The English country gentleman galloping after a fox—the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

MRS ALLONBY : They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good.

Anybody can be good in the country.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in the glass.

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.

A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

I can resist everything except temptation.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.

It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection; through Art, and through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

LADY BRACKNELL : A handbag?

To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

In married life three is company and two none.

Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately, in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.

The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.

Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of

So many gods, so many creeds,

We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.