"The English public always feels perfectly at..." - Quote by Oscar Wilde

“To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.”

“For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners.”

“He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.”

“When they've tortured and scared you for 20 odd years, then they expect you to pick a career.”

“Why was I born with such contemporaries?”

“In the first place, all books that get fairly into the vital air of the world were written by the successful class, by the affirming and advancing class, who utter what tens of thousands feel though they cannot say.”

“You know better than I that in a Republic talent is always suspect. A man attains an elevated position only when his mediocrity prevents him from being a threat to others. And for this reason a democracy is never governed by the most competent, but rather by those whose insignificance will not jeopardize anyone else's self-esteem.”

“To be popular one must be a mediocrity." "Not with Women," said the duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all." "It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmered Dorian.”

“Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.”