"Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything.Yes, murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; and when they grow older they know it."

"Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read."

"Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."

"If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want."

"The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life."

"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing."

"It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true."

"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship."

"I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself."

"Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different."

"There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing."

"The world is a stage and the play is badly cast."

"I like men who have a future and women who have a past."

"No good deed goes unpunished."

"I have nothing to declare except my genius."

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

"I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best."

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

"I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability."

"Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other."

"What fire does not destroy, it hardens"

"But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to."