"Missionaries are going to reform the world..." - Quote by Oscar Wilde

“Personally, I have a great admiration for stupidity.”

“Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They’re the only things we can pay.”

“In England it is enough for a man to try and produce any serious, beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen.”

“A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.”

“If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now that in the time of the Pharaohs?”

“Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures. They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for me. I should infinitely prefer a book.”

“Government has been a fossil: it should be a plant.”

“If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress.”

“It is the reformer who is anxious for the reform, and not society, from which he should expect nothing better than opposition, abhorrence and even mortal persecution.”