Oscar Wilde

men feel­ing a nat­ural in­stinct of ter­ror about pas­sions and sen­sa­tions that seem stronger than them­selves, and that they are con­scious of shar­ing with the less highly or­gan­ized forms of ex­ist­ence

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

What sort of a woman is she?
LORD GORING. Oh! a genius in the daytime and a beauty at night!

Of course. You see, it is a very dangerous thing to listen. If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person.

Chil­dren be­gin by lov­ing their par­ents; as they grow older they judge them; some­times they for­give them.

In the wild struggle for ex­ist­ence, we want to have some­thing that en­dures, and so we fill our minds with rub­bish and facts, in the silly hope of keep­ing our place.

Men and wo­men at such mo­ments lose the free­dom of their will. They move to their ter­rible end as auto­matons move.

“every por­trait that is painted with feel­ing is a por­trait of the artist, not of the sit­ter.

The ad­vant­age of the emo­tions is that they lead us astray, and the ad­vant­age of sci­ence is that it is not emo­tional.”

When I like people im­mensely, I never tell their names to any­one. It is like sur­ren­der­ing a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make mod­ern life mys­ter­i­ous or mar­vel­lous to us. The com­mon­est thing is de­light­ful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am go­ing. If I did, I would lose all my pleas­ure