Fog and hypocrisy – that is to say, shadow, convention, decency – these were the very things that lent to London its poetry and romance.
As a rule the person found out in a betrayal of love holds, all the same, the superior position of the two. It is the betrayed one who is humiliated.
Many women I know think the ideal of happiness is to be in love with a great man, or to be the wife of a great public success; to share his triumph! They forget you share the man as well!
Most people now seem to treasure anything they value in proportion to the extent that it’s followed about and surrounded by the vulgar public.
Most people would far rather be seen through than not be seen at all.
People were not charmed with Eglantine because she herself was charming, but because she was charmed.
A butler in an English household should, however, be English, and as much like an archbishop as possible.
Everything comes to the man who won’t wait.
There is, of course, no joy so great as the cessation of pain; in fact all joy, active or passive, is the cessation of some pain, since it must be the satisfaction of a longing, even perhaps an unconscious longing.
She could carry off anything; and some people said that she did.
She suspected him of infidelity, with and without reason, morning, noon and night.
Some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a place to get away from.
A morbid propensity that causes great suffering in domestic life is often curiously infectious to the very person for whom it creates most suffering.
Women are so perverse. Look how they won’t wear black when nothing suits them so well!
Looking at the poems of John Gray when I saw the tiniest rivulet of text meandering through the very largest meadow of margin, I suggested to Oscar Wilde that he should go a step further than these minor poets; he should publish a book all margin; full of beautiful, unwritten thoughts.
To a woman – I mean, a nice woman – there is no such thing as men. There is a man; and either she is so fond of him that she can talk of nothing else, however unfavourably, or so much in love with him that she never mentions his name.
It’s always something to get one’s wish, even if the wish is a failure.
Feminine intuition, a quality perhaps even rarer in women than in men.
Thou canst not serve both cod and salmon.
Absurdly improbable things are quite as liable to happen in real life as in weak literature.