Oscar Wilde

"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."

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

"A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author."

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

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

"You can never be overdressed or overeducated."

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

"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction."

"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."

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

"A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament."

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."

"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."

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

"Who, being loved, is poor?"

"No good deed goes unpunished."

"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power."

"Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire."

"Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success."