Quote collection
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"The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity."
"A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life."
"There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband."
"I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else."
"The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all."
"Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones."
"I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house-tops."
"However, I think anything is better than high intellectual pressure. That is the most unbecoming thing there is. It makes the noses of the young girls so particularly large."
"My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's."
"All great ideas are dangerous."
"The greatest of all sins is stupidity."
"As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them of course, but one cannot possibly admire them."
"Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others."
"Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him."
"A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature."
"One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed."
"We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it"
"There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose."
"And now, I am dying beyond my means. (Said while sipping champagne on his deathbed.)"
"When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also."