Oscar Wilde

“The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.”

“Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.”

“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.”

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”

“To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.”

“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”

“Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.”

“No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.”

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”

“Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.”

“Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.”

“I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”

“The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.”

“Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.”

“Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.”

“No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.”

“The best way to make children good is to make them happy.”