- "When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs".

- "Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellect".

- "Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men"

- "Life is a great disappointment".

- "A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her".

- "I like men who have a future and women who have a past".

- "Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast".

- "You always want to know what one has been doing. I always want to forget what I have been doing".

- "I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting. Besides, the stuff is better".

- "Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts".

- "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. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for".

- "From a label there is no escape!"

- "I give the truths of tomorrow. - I prefer the mistakes of today".

- "It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly".

- "Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues".

- "They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy".

- "I believe in the race. - It represents the survival of the pushing. - It has developmant. - Decay fascinates me more. - What of Art? - It is a malady. - Love? - An illusion. - Religion? - The fashionable substitute for Belief. - You are a sceptic. - Never! Scepticism is he beginning of Faith. - What are you? - To define is to limit. - Give me a clue. - Threads snap. You would lose your way in the labyrinth".

- "Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity".

- "Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. 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".

- "A burnt child loves the fire".

- "The appeal to antiquity is fatal to us who are romanticists".

- "Romantic Art begins with its climax".

- "Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all".

- "Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude".

- "The only horrible thing in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness".

- "Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that".

- "A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on".

- "The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty".

- "The world goes to the altar of its own accord".

- "Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful".

- "All ways end at the same point".

- "Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt".

- "Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away".

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

- "Anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often. That is one of the most important secrets of life".

- "Like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart".

- "If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart".

- "Art had a soul, but that man had not".

- "The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us".

- "The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of Faith, and the lesson of Romance".

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

- "The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young".

- "Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams".

- "Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile".

- "The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all".