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

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”

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

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”

“I can resist anything except temptation.”

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”

“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

“Hearts are made to be broken.”

“To define is to limit.”

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”

“You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”

“With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?”

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”

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

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

“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”

“A good friend will always stab you in the front.”

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

“I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”

“Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”

“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”

“I am not young enough to know everything.”

“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

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

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

“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”

“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”

“There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.”

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

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

“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.”

“No good deed goes unpunished.”

“I have nothing to declare except my genius.”

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

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

“I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”

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

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”