I never intend to grow old. The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.
And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.
0 《A Woman of No Importance》
In a Temple every one should be serious, except the thing that is worshipped.
One should never surrender.
Not even to the Ideal Man?
Certainly not to him. Unless, of course, one wants to grow tired of him.
The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions.
Oh, women have become so highly educated, that nothing should surprise us nowadays, except happy marriages.
They apparently are getting remarkably rare.
Oh, they're quite out of date.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.
No man does. That is his.
You should never try to understand them（women）. Women are pictures. Men are problems. If you want to know what a woman really means - which, by the way, is always a dangerous thing to do - look at her, don't listen to her.
To get into the best society, nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people - that is all!
The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden.
It ends with Revelations.
Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man's last romance.
She certainly has a wonderful faculty of remembering people's names, and forgetting their faces.
One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.
They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris.
Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go to?
Oh, they go to America.
Curious thing, plain women are always jealous of their husbands, beautiful women never are!
Beautiful women never have time. They are always so occupied in being jealous of other people's husbands.
The history of women is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.
Oh! Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.
When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also.
One should never take sides in anything. Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore.
to the philosopher, my dear Gerald, women represent the triumph of matter over mind - just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
We men know life too early.
And we women know life too late.
The world says that Lord Illingworth is very, very wicked.
But what world says that? It must be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.
Man, poor, awkward, reliable, necessary man belongs to a sex that has been rational for millions and millions of years. He can't help himself. It is in his race. The History of Woman is very different. We have always been picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense.
I never intend to grow old. The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.
And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile, like most kings.
When one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself. And one ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. But a really GRANDE PASSION is comparatively rare nowadays. It is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes in a country.
So much marriage is certainly not becoming. Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building
Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
But don't you think one can be happy when one is married?
Perfectly happy. But the happiness of a married man, my dear Gerald, depends on the people he has not married.
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
奥斯卡·王尔德（Oscar Wilde，1854~1900），19世纪爱尔兰（当时由英国统治）最伟大的作家与艺术家之一，以其剧作、诗歌、童话和小说闻名。唯美主义代表人物，19世纪80年代美学运动的主力和90年代颓废派运动的先驱。
