“Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last.”
“I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.”
“Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.”
“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
“We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”
“In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst.”
“My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.”
“There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.”
“Like two doomed ships that pass in storm we had crossed each other's way: but we made no sign, we said no word, we had no word to say.”
“She is absolutely inadmissible into society. Many a woman has a past, but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and that they all fit.”
“For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners.”
“If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.”
“I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.”
“As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have it's fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.”
“Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.”
“Punctuality is the thief of time. Wilde I never travel without my diary. One should always have Something sensational to read in the train.”
“A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.”
“No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.”
“There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating --people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.”
“There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.”
“Misfortunes one can endure -- they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults -- Ah! there is the sting of life.”
“It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one's back, that are absolutely and entirely true.”
“I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.”
“The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them.”
“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
“To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.”
“I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.”
“We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.”
“If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.”
“The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.”