Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

I can resist everything except temptation.

My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go. Last words

I am not young enough to know everything.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Genius lasts longer than beauty.

I don't recognize you - I've changed a lot.

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

A true friend stabs you in the front.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

No man is rich enough to buy back his own past.

Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Life is far too important to be taken seriously.

Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

Punctuality is the thief of time.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too. Reply to his friend and contemporary David Hunter-Blair who asked him what his real ambition was, in about 1878.

Who, being loved, is poor?

When a man does exactly what a woman expects him to do she doesn't think much of him. One should always do what a woman doesn't expect, just as one should say what she doesn't understand.

One of the requisites of sanity is to disagree with the majority of the British public.

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

I have nothing to declare except my genius. He is supposed to have said this while passing through a customs checkpoint in New York.