Erlynne: Don’t use ugly words, Windermere. They are vulgar.

Lady Windermere’s Fan

No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime. Vulgarity is the conduct of others.

“Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”

All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

There is a fatality about all good resolutions. They are invariably made too soon.

“Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”

In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.

“Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune … to lose both looks like carelessness.

The Importance of Being Earnest

One must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life.

The Importance of Being Earnest

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation.

A Woman of No Importance

Duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself.

A Woman of No Importance

Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.

Lady Windermere’s Fan
Similarly in “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime”

I never talk scandal. I only talk gossip.

Lady Windermere’s Fan

We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

I never talk during music, at least during good music. If one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it in conversation.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself....

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best way of ending one.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

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

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism”

The sure way of knowing nothing about life, is to try to make oneself useful.

“The Critic as Artist”

To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

“The Critic as Artist”

A cultured Mahomedan once remarked to us, “You Christians are so occupied in misinterpreting the fourth commandment that you have never thought of making an artistic application of the second.”

“The Decay of Lying”

It is difficult not to be unjust to what one loves.

“The Critic as Artist”

There are things that are right to say, but that may be said at the wrong time and to the wrong people.

A Woman of No Importance

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

One should never make one’s debut with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one’s old age.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Don’t talk about horrid subjects. If one doesn’t talk about a thing, it has never happened.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Society, civilised society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals....

The Picture of Dorian Gray

One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Cecil Graham: Oh! gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. Now, I never moralise. A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain.

Lady Windermere’s Fan

The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up.

“The Soul of Man under Socialism”

Lady Bracknell: Good-afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving well.

Algernon: I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.

Lady Bracknell: That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Cecily: Pray do! I think that whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Cecily: This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manner. When I see a spade I call it a spade.

Gwendolen: I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

The Importance of Being Earnest

In point of fact, what is interesting about people in good Society … is the mask that each one of them wears, not the reality that lies behind the mask.

“The Decay of Lying”

CHARACTER

I can resist everything except temptation.

Lady Windermere’s Fan

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.

“Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”

Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Nowadays to be found intelligible is to be found out.

Lady Windermere’s Fan

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

Lady Windermere’s Fan

The aim of life is self-development. To realise one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

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

“The Soul of Man under Socialism”

Remember that the sentimentalist is always a cynic at heart. Indeed sentimentality is merely the bank holiday of cynicism.

De Profundis

Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes a character.

De Profundis

Those who have much are often greedy, those who have little always share.

De Profundis

The supreme vice is shallowness.

De Profundis

No one survives being over-estimated, nor is there any surer way of destroying an author’s reputation than to glorify him without judgment and to praise him without tact.

“Great Writers by Little Men”

Anybody can be reasonable, but to be sane is not common; and sane poets are as rare as blue lilies....

“A Note on Some Modern Poets”

How appalling is that ignorance which is the inevitable result of the fatal habit of imparting opinions!

“The Critic as Artist”

What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

“The Critic as Artist”
Similarly in The Picture of Dorian Gray

Temperament is the primary requisite of the critic....

“The Critic as Artist”

He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always a sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity if not a decadence of morals.

“Pen, Pencil and Poison”

Gilbert: A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

“The Critic as Artist”

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

“The Critic as Artist”

It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

“The Soul of Man under Socialism”

Like all poetical natures, [Christ] loved ignorant people. He knew that in the soul of one who is ignorant there is always room for a great idea.

De Profundis

Cecily: I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Algernon: If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

The Importance of Being Earnest

People have a careless way of talking about a “born liar,” just as they talk about a born poet. But in both cases they are wrong. Lying and poetry are arts—arts, as Plato saw, not unconnected with each other—and they require the most careful study, the most disinterested devotion.

“The Decay of Lying”

Many a young man starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration which, if nurtured in congenial and sympathic surroundings, or by the imitation of the best models, might grow into something really great and wonderful.

“The Decay of Lying”

Lying for the sake of the improvement of the young, which is the basis of home education, still lingers amongst us.

“The Decay of Lying”

CHILDREN

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

A Woman of No Importance
Similarly in The Picture of Dorian Gray

To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefit of their experience.

“The American Invasion”

No office is too mean, no care too lowly for the thing we women love.

A Woman of No Importance

Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

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

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Youth! There is nothing like it.