Цитаты из книги Selections. Volume one

As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.

The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we're all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They become more highly organized, and to be highly organized is, I should fancy, the object of man's existence.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

To be in love is to surpass oneself.

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

It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect--simply a confession of failure.

A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.

Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious; both are disappointed.

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

Я задал ему этот вопрос из самого лучшего побуждения, единственного, которое оправдывает какие бы то ни было вопросы: из простого любопытства.

Такое отвратительное зрелище терпимо еще под покровом ночи, но не днем..

Конечно, он отдавал дань и моде, которая на время может осуществить любую фантазию, добившись всеобщего признания.

Милый друг, в деревне всякий может быть праведником, — с улыбкой заметил лорд Генри. — Там нет никаких соблазнов. По этойто причине людей, живущих за городом, не коснулась цивилизация. Да, да, приобщиться к цивилизации — дело весьма нелегкое. Для этого есть два пути: культура или так называемый разврат. А деревенским жителям то и другое недоступно. Вот они и закоснели в добродетели