A few words from Oscar Wilde

I was reading an interview with Rupert Everett (whose two auto-biographies are quite remarkable) and he is playing Oscar Wilde in the West End and it got me thinking about the pair of them, the richness of London theatre and of course the one-liners of Mr Wilde:

A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.

A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

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

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.

At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Genius is born--not paid.

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

I am not young enough to know everything.

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures. 

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.