Oscar Wilde

"There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope."

"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."

"Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life."

"This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last."

"There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate - not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all."

"Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life."

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

"Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level."

"We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell."

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

"We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities."

"In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody."

"Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not."

"Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life...I have put only my talent into my works."

"It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors."

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

"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!"

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

"The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study."

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."