Only the shallow know themselves




A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation.
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Biography lends to death a new terror.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Cynicism is knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
I am not young enough to know everything.
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.
It is grossly selfish to require of one's neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Medievalism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its wild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its whipping with rods -- Medievalism is real Christianity, and the medieval Christ is the real Christ.
Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Only the shallow know themselves.
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.
The basis for optimism is sheer terror
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read, and fashion is so intolerable it has to be changed every six weeks
The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
The worst vice of the fanatic is his sincerity.The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. Oscar Wilde (dedicated to J.R. - you know who you are)
There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.
Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Mark Twain	Assorted other quotes