Sourced and curated.

Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.

The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything.

1905

★ 1.0

What a silly thing Love is!...It is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true.

1885

★ 1.1

Short story

1888

★ 1.1

The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.

The secret of success is to offend the greatest number of people.

1905

★ 1.1

Biography

1949

★ 1.1

It is the Folly of too many, to mistake the Eccho of a London Coffee-house for the Voice of the Kingdom.

The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

1711

★ 1.2

Essay · Satire

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

1711

★ 1.2

Essay · Satire

The people are the masters.

1727

★ 1.2

Speech · Political speech

Speech in House of Commons, February 11, 1780 · 1780

★ 1.2

The mind of the thoroughly well informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.

The Picture of Dorian Gray · 1890

★ 1.2

Essay · Magazine · Political literature

Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications.

Fortnightly Review · 1891

★ 1.2

Short story

1891

★ 1.2

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

One should always be a little improbable.

1898

★ 1.2

Epigrams · Journal

1894

★ 1.3

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People · 1895

★ 1.3

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats

1899

★ 1.3

Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

One has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends.

The Picture of Dorian Gray · 1890

★ 1.3

Novel

Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong; where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labors... Then surely it is braver, a saner and truer thing, to be a rebel in act and deed against such circumstances as these than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men.

The Picture of Dorian Gray · 1891

★ 1.3

Courtroom speech · Speech

Roger Casement

1917

★ 1.7

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms Which I gaze on so fondly today, Were to change by tomorrow and fleet in my arms, Like fairy gifts fading away, Thou would'st still be ador'd as this moment thou art, Let thy loveliness fade as it will, And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart Would entwine itself verdantly still.

Thomas Moore

1808

★ 1.8

Novel

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.

My days have been so wondrous free, The little birds that fly With careless ease from tree to tree, Were but bless'd as I.

1887

★ 1.8

Song

Thomas Parnell

My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free · 1714

★ 1.9

Pamphlet · Political literature

I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say, that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.

1770

★ 1.9

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

1903

★ 1.9

The photographer is like the cod which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.

All art is collaboration.

1906

★ 1.9

Play · Comedy (play)

John Millington Synge

1907

★ 1.9

Oh, love is the crooked thing, There is nobody wise enough To find out all that is in it, For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon.

W.B. Yeats

1910

★ 1.9

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

Samuel Beckett

1930

★ 1.9

There's no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.

Brendan Behan

1965

★ 1.9

Play · Comedy (play)

For love is but discovery: When that is made, the pleasure's done.

Thomas Southerne

1690

★ 1.9

Play · Comedy (play) · Comedy of manners · Comedy

Never say more than is necessary.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The Rivals · 1775

★ 1.9

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.

Be just before you're generous.

1777

★ 1.9

Play · Comedy (play) · Comedy of manners · Comedy

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The School for Scandal · 1777

★ 1.9

Play · Satire (play) · Satire

There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The Critic · 1779

★ 1.9

Political literature

Society is indeed a contract... As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 1.9

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

1815

★ 1.9

It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realize our perfection; through Art, and through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

1891

★ 1.9

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.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

A Woman of No Importance · 1893

★ 1.9

Play · Drama (play) · Comedy (play)

1894

★ 1.9

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

1903

★ 1.9

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

1903

★ 1.9

It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.

W.B. Yeats

1903

★ 1.9

Novel · Magazine · Modernist literature

I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile and cunning.

James Joyce

The Egoist · 1915

★ 1.9

Novel · Magazine · Modernist literature

When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

James Joyce

The Egoist · 1915

★ 1.9

Novel · Magazine · Modernist literature

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo....

James Joyce

The Egoist · 1915

★ 1.9

Play · Modernist literature

Let us pray to God... The bastard! He doesn't exist!

Samuel Beckett

1957

★ 1.9

Magazine

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

Samuel Beckett

1969

★ 1.9

Satire

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.

Laws are like Cobwebs, which may catch small Flies, but let Wasps and Hornets break through.

1704

★ 2.0

Essay · Philosophical literature

I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.

1711

★ 2.0

Travel writing · Satire

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 2.0

Speech · Political speech

1771

★ 2.0

Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

1777

★ 2.0

Speech · Political speech

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

Speech at the Bristol Guildhall, September 6, 1780 · 1780

★ 2.0

Political literature

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 2.0

Political literature

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 2.0

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all.

1797

★ 2.0

Hymn · Song

Cecil Frances Alexander

All Things Bright and Beautiful · 1848

★ 2.0

Beauty is a form of genius,—is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell, we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.

The Picture of Dorian Gray · 1890

★ 2.0

Realize your youth while you have it... Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.