Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
How clever are you, my dear! You never mean a single word you say!
Many people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one’s self over poetry is an honor.
My friend is not allowed to go out today. I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else’s diary; I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine.
I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering.
He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one’s eyes, and does not look at him.
I was wrong. God’s law is only Love.
It can never be necessary to do what is not honourable.
Well, I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.
Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs.
A burnt child loves the fire.
I’ve now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.
When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.
I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question – simple curiosity.
My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist. It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn’t a dentist. It produces false impression.
People say sometimes that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity.
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
I see that any materialism in life coarsens the soul, and that the hunger of the body and the appetites of the flesh desecrate always, and often destroy.
The weather is entrancing, but in my heart there is no sun.