Women - Oscar Wilde 

Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde (Dublino, 16 oct. 1854 - Parigi, 30 nov. 1900) Di seguito una selezione dei suoi aforismi dedicati alle donne:

• A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
• A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
• A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
• A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
• A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
• A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
• A true friend stabs you in the front.
• A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
• Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.
• Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
• All art is quite useless.
• All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
• All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
• All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
• Always forgive your enemies
•  nothing annoys them so much.
• Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

• Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
• America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
• An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
• Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
• Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.
• Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
• As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
• As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
• As yet, Bernard Shaw hasn't become prominent enough to have any enemies, but none of his friends like him.
• At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.
• Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
• Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
• Biography lends to death a new terror.
• By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
• Charity creates a multitude of sins.
• Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
• Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade
• name of the firm. That is all.
• Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
• Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative.
• Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
• Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
• Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
• Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.
• Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
• Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
• Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
• Everything popular is wrong.
• Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
• Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
• Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
• Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
• Hatred is blind, as well as love.
• He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
• He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.
• He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about.
• He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.
• How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
• How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
• I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
• I am not young enough to know everything.
• I can resist everything except temptation.
• I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
• I have nothing to declare except my genuis.
• I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
• I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
• I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
• I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
• I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.
• I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.
• I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
• I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.
• I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
• I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.
• If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
• If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.
• If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.
• If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.
• If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
• If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
• Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
• In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
• In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.
• In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.
• In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
• In every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust.
• In married life three is company and two none.
• It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
• It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
• It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.
• It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
• It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
• It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
• It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.
• It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.
• It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
• Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
• Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
• Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
• Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
• Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
• Life is too important to be taken seriously.
• Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
• Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
• Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.
• Men always want to be a woman's first love
•  women like to be a man's last romance.
• Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
• Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
• 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.
• Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
• Mrs. Allonby: No man does. That is his.
• Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.
• Music makes one feel so romantic  at least it always gets on one's nerves  which is the same thing nowadays.
• My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.
• No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
• No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
• No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.
• No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
• Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
• Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.
• Nothing makes one so vain as being told one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.
• Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.
• Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.
• Of course America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
• Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an open air cafe in Paris.
• One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
• One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
• One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
• One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
• One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.
• Only the shallow know themselves.
• Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
• Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.
• Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
• Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
• Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
• Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.
• Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
• Self denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.
• Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
• Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
• She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
• Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
• Some of these people need ten years of therapy
• ten sentences of mine do not equal ten years of therapy.
• Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
• The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
• The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
• The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
• The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
• The English country gentleman galloping after a fox
•  The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
• The General was essentially a man of peace, except of course in his domestic affairs.
• The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
• The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
• The man who can dominate a London dinner
• table can dominate the world.
• The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
• The old believe everything, the middle
• aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
• The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
• The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
• The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.
• The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
• The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
• The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.
• The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
• The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
• The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
• The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.
• The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.
• There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating
•  people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
• There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
• There is no sin except stupidity.
• There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
• There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.
• There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.
• There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.
• There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
• These days man knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.
• This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
• Those whom the gods love grow young.
• To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.
• To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
• To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
• True friends stab you in the front.
• We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
• What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.
• When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.
• When good Americans die they go to Paris.
• When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.
• When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
• Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
• Who, being loved, is poor?
• Why was I born with such contemporaries?
• Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
• Women are made to be loved, not understood.
• Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
• Work is the curse of the drinking classes.