I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.
Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast.
The English can't stand a man who is always saying he is in the right, but they are very fond of a man who admits he has been in the wrong. It is one of the best things in them.
Life is simply a 'mauvais quart d'heure' made up of exquisite moments.
There is the same world for all of us, and good and evil, sin and innocence, go through it hand in hand. To shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.
Married men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands and abominably conceited when they are not.
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. This has become an absolute public nuisance.
I don't think man has much capacity for development. He has got as far as he can, and that is not far, is it?
I am not quite sure that I quite know what pessimism really means. All I do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, cannot be lived without much charity. It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation of the next.
I do not approve of anything that that tampers with natural arrogance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit: touch it, and the blossom is gone.
The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately, in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of life and of that practical organisation of life that we call society.
Men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less than ancient, history supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, history would be quite unreadable.
I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.
The two weak points in our age are its want of principle and its want of profile.
Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women who have of their own free choice remained thirty-five for years.
Never speak disrespectfully of society. Only people who can't get into it do that.
It is always painful to part with people whom one has known for a very brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.
To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.
One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
The essence of thought, as the essence of life, is growth.
What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.
In a temple everyone should be serious except the thing that is worshipped.
We are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent.
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.
To be in society is merely a bore, but to be out of it simply a tragedy.
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
One should never make one's début with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age.
What man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure is nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy he is in harmony with himself and his environment.
Society often forgives the criminal, it never forgives the dreamer.
It is so easy for people to have sympathy with suffering. It is so difficult for them to have sympathy with thought.
Conversation should touch on everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything and people who know absolutely nothing.
The public is wonderfully tolerant; it forgives everything except genius.
Life makes us pay too high a price for its wares, and we purchase the meanest of its secrets at a cost that is monstrous and infinite.
This horrid House of Commons quite ruins our husbands for us. I think the Lower House by far the greatest blow to a happy married life that there has been since that terrible thing they called the Higher Education of Women was invented.
Once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not? And I don't like that. It makes men so very attractive.
Experience is a question of instinct about life.
What is true about art is true about life.
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
I like men who have a future and women who have a past.
Women, as some witty Frenchman put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.
In matters of grave importance style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.
The only way to behave to a woman, is to make love to her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain.
Women give to men the very gold of their lives. Possibly; but they invariably want it back in such very small change.
Define women as a sex? Sphinxes without secrets.
What do you call a bad man? The sort of man who admires innocence.
What do you call a bad woman? Oh! the sort of woman a man never gets tired of.
One can resist everything except temptation.
Don't let us go to life for our fulfilment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence or form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic and critical temperament.
It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.
One can always know at once whether a man has home claims upon his life or not. I have noticed a very, very sad expression in the eyes of so many married men.
A mother who doesn't part with a daughter every season has no real affection.
To be good is to be in harmony with oneself. Discord is to be forced to