“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.”
“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”
“It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”
“When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”
“Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women...merely adored.”
“It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love”
“The error all women commit. Why can’t you women love us, faults
and all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all feet of
clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them
knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all
the more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect,
who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands,
or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us – else what use
is love at all? All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All
lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon. A man’s love is like that.
It is wider, larger, more human than a woman’s. Women think that they
are making ideals of men. What they are making of us are false idols
merely. You made your false idol of me, and I had not the courage to
come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses. I was afraid
that I might lose your love, as I have lost it now.”
“I analyzed you, though you did not adore me.”
“Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.”
“To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.”
“Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.”
“Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.
And falsehoods the truths of other people.
Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.”
“Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.”
“this woman is a genius in the day time and a beauty at night”
“If people are dishonest once, they will be dishonest a second time. And honest people should keep away from them. (Lady Chiltern)”
“All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon.”
“You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about...anything, which you don't, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you. It is a public scandal the way I adore you. I have been going about for the last six months telling the whole of society that I adore you. I wonder you consent to have anything to say to me. I have no character left at all. At least, I feel so happy that I am quite sure I have no character left at all.”
“The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived.”
“Never mind what I say. I am always saying what I shouldn't say. In fact, I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.”
“You are Beautiful when you are happy”
“In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.”
“He is fond of being misunderstood. It gives him a post of vantage.”
“Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is”
“You have never been poor, and never known what ambition is.”
“I like looking at geniuses and listening to beautiful people.”
“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast”
“Then I am sorry I did not stay away longer I like being missed.”
“It can never be necessary to do what is not honourable.”
“Feelings are never stupid, they just make us feel stupid sometimes.”
“Bigger room, darling. Like I said, we need a bigger room.”
“We think of happiness as something we can take. But usually it comes from being content with what we have, and accepting ourselves.”
“I was sitting there, as I said, and had been for several watches, when I came to me that I was reading no longer. For some time I was hard put to say what I had been doing. When I tried, I could only think of certain odors and textures and colors that seemed to have no connection with anything discussed in the volume I held. At last I realized that instead of reading it, I had been observing it as a physical object. The red I recalled came from the ribbon sewn to the headband so that I might mark my place. The texture that tickled my fingers still was that of the paper in which the book was printed. The smell in my nostrils was old leather, still wearing the traces of birch oil. It was only then, when I saw the books themselves, when I began to understand their care.”
His grip on my shoulder tightened. “We have books here bound in the hides of echidnes, krakens, and beasts so long extinct that those whose studies they are, are for the most part of the opinion that no trace of them survives unfossilized. We have books bound wholly in metals of unknown alloy, and books whose bindings are covered with the thickest gems. We have books cased in perfumed woods shipped across the inconceivable gulf between creations—books doubly precious because no one on Urth can read them.”
“We have books whose papers are matted of plants from which spring curious alkaloids, so that the reader, in turning their pages, is taken unaware by bizarre fantasies and chimeric dreams. Books whose pages are not paper at all, but delicate wafers of white jade, ivory, and shell; books too who leaves are the desiccated leaves of unknown plants. Books we have also that are not books at all to the eye: scrolls and tablets and recordings on a hundred different substances. There is a cube of crystal here—though I can no longer tell you where—no larger than the ball of your thumb that contains more books than the library itself does. Though a harlot might dangle it from one ear for an ornament, there are not volumes enough in the world to counterweight the other.”
“Even the worst feeling, with time and familiarity, became tolerable.”
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