“Who, being loved, is poor?” 

“Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.” 

“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.” 

“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” 

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” 

I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.

It should never fall into something usual and settled, but should be alert and inventive, and add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery.

Friendship demands a religious treatment. We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it.

The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. 

Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion.

Men are better than their theology.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whisper of God.

In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity.

We ask for long life, but ’tis deep life, or noble moments that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.” 

“I have nothing to declare except my genius.” 

“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.” 

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

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” 

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

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

“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.” 

“Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.” 

“No good deed goes unpunished.” 

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.

A moment is a concentrated eternity.

What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour?

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.

Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve anyone; it must husband its resources to live. But health or fullness answers its own ends, and has to spare, runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men’s necessities.

The best part of health is fine disposition. It is more essential than talent, even in the works of talent.

Whenever you are sincerely pleased, you are nourished. The joy of the spirit indicates its strength. All healthy things are sweet-tempered.

“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.” 

“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.” 

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.” 

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.” 

“I like men who have a future and women who have a past.” 

“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” 

“The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.” 

“Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.” 

“Every woman is a rebel.” 

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

“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.” 

“I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.” 

“To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.” 

“A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.” 

“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.”