I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

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

The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.

I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

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.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. The past is history. The future is mysterious. Then tomorrow—this starts all over again.

I don't have luxurious tastes or great needs, but my independence is worth a lot to me.

Influence is like a savings account, the less you use it, the more you've got

Courage lies in being oneself, in showing complete independence, in loving what one loves, in discovering the deep roots of one's feelings.

Power and machinery, money and goods, are useful only as they set us free to live.

You must emulate the truth you exhort.

It was 100,000 years before we figured out what to do with fire. Imagine cavemen, sitting in front of a fire, eating raw meat for 100 thousand years.

That becomes the revolution, to be idealistic enough that you think you can change the world, and what you find is you can't change anything but yourself.

No place is too common.

I appeal to the Youth and those on the ground: start talking to each other across divisions of race and political organizations.