Quotes to inspire and reflect

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

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

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

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

Anybody can be good in the country.

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

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

It is better to be beautiful than to be good.

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

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

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

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.

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.

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

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

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

I can resist everything except temptation.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

LADY BRACKNELL : A handbag?

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.

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

The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.

In married life three is company and two none.

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

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,

Laugh and the world laughs with you;

O brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother.

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,

‘Shoot, if you must, this old grey head,

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed,

Do I contradict myself?

Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?

Urge and urge and urge,

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

Camerado, this is no book,