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

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."

"Imagination is a quality that was given to man compensate him from whats not. The sense of humor was given to console him from what is."

"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life."

"To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul."

"The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."

"Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing."

"I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!"

"The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for."

"Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life."

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

"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."