The poor should be
practical
and prosaic.
Oscar Wilde - Poetry
Truth is a very complex thing and politics is a very complex business.
There are wheels within wheels. One may be under certain obligations to
people that one must pay. Sooner or later in political life one has to
compromise. Everyone does.
Men can love what is beneath them--things unworthy, stained,
dishonoured. We women worship when we love; and when we lose our worship
we lose everything.
The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.
The one advantage of playing with fire is that one never gets even
singed. It is the people who don't know how to play with it who get
burned up.
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.
When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one
amuses other people. It is excessively boring.
Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the
unemployed.
The poor should be practical and prosaic.
An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a
real friendship. It starts in the right manner.
The truths of metaphysics are the truths of masks.
Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no
future before it in this world.
The happy people of the world have their value, but only the negative
value of foils. They throw up and emphasise the beauty and the
fascination of the unhappy.
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one
wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst--the last
is a real tragedy.
Disobedience in the eyes of anyone who has read history is man's
original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been
made--through disobedience and rebellion.
It is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees. It makes
life too full of terrors.
Comfort is the only thing our civilisation can give us.