A thing is not
necessarily
true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde - Poetry
becoming.
One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be
judged.
In a very ugly and sensible age the arts borrow, not from life, but from
each other.
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is
fatal.
Secrets from other people's wives are a necessary luxury in modern life.
So, at least, I am told at the club by people who are bald enough to
know better. But no man should have a secret from his own wife. She
invariably finds it out. Women have a wonderful instinct about things.
They discover everything except the obvious.
Life holds the mirror up to art, and either reproduces some strange type
imagined by painter or sculptor or realises in fact what has been
dreamed in fiction.
I feel sure that if I lived in the country for six months I should
become so unsophisticated that no one would take the slightest notice of
me.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is
like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
I am always saying what I shouldn't say; in fact, I usually say what I
really think--a great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be
misunderstood.
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man
is.
The basis of every scandal is an absolute immoral certainty.
People talk so much about the beauty of confidence. They seem to
entirely ignore the much more subtle beauty of doubt. To believe is very
dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live,
to be lulled into security is to die.
Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one
must be a mediocrity.
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names
to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions, my one
quarrel is with words.
One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be
judged.
In a very ugly and sensible age the arts borrow, not from life, but from
each other.
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is
fatal.
Secrets from other people's wives are a necessary luxury in modern life.
So, at least, I am told at the club by people who are bald enough to
know better. But no man should have a secret from his own wife. She
invariably finds it out. Women have a wonderful instinct about things.
They discover everything except the obvious.
Life holds the mirror up to art, and either reproduces some strange type
imagined by painter or sculptor or realises in fact what has been
dreamed in fiction.
I feel sure that if I lived in the country for six months I should
become so unsophisticated that no one would take the slightest notice of
me.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is
like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
I am always saying what I shouldn't say; in fact, I usually say what I
really think--a great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be
misunderstood.
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man
is.
The basis of every scandal is an absolute immoral certainty.
People talk so much about the beauty of confidence. They seem to
entirely ignore the much more subtle beauty of doubt. To believe is very
dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live,
to be lulled into security is to die.
Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one
must be a mediocrity.
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names
to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions, my one
quarrel is with words.
