#satire
40 quotes
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Ch. 4”
“We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language. The Canterville Ghost (1887)”
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple. The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Act I”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)”
“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Act III”
“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Act I”
“I can resist anything except temptation. Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Act I”
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Ch. 4”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Act III”
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken”
“Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough. "A Mysterious Visit", Buffalo Express , 19 March 1870. Anthologized in Mark Twain's Sketches, New and Old”
“Ah, it was worth ten years of a man’s life to be dead then! Everything was pleasant. I was in a good neighbourhood, for all the dead people that lived near me belonged to the best families in the city. "A Curious Dream", in Mark Twain’s Sketches, Selected and Revised by the Author (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1872) p. 308”
“Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's Farm”
“Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience”
“The Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation”
“The Treaty With China”
“Cited by: William E. Phipps, Mark Twain's Religion , Mercer University Press, 2003, p. 18 Richard Locke, Critical Children: The Use of Childhood in Ten Great Novels , Columbia University Press, p. 12”
“Brief Biographical Sketch of George Washington”
“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”
“Answers to Correspondents”
“I am struck again by the fact that as soon as a working man gets an official post in the Trade Union or goes into Labour politics, he becomes middle”
“There is a geographical element in all belief”
“It is a mysterious thing, the loss of faith”
“Think of life as it really is, think of the details of life; and then think that there is no meaning in it, no purpose, no goal except the grave. Surely only fools or self”
“Man is not a Yahoo, but he is rather like a Yahoo and needs to be reminded of it from time to time. Review of Tropic of Cancer , in New English Weekly”
“The Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters, George Orwell: An Age Like This, 1920”
“As to a pseudonym, a name I always use when tramping etc is P. S. Burton, but if you don't think this sounds a probable kind of name, what about Kenneth Miles, George Orwell, H. Lewis Allways. I rather favour George Orwell. Letter to Leonard Moore”
“In England, a century of strong government has developed what O. Henry called the stern and rugged fear of the police to a point where any public protest seems an indecency. But in France everyone can remember a certain amount of civil disturbance, and even the workmen in the bistros talk of la revolution”
“And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working”
“This means no more than vae victis”
“The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life. You Never Can Tell , Act II”
“We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners. You Never Can Tell , Act I”
“I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler. I don't like beer. Candida , Act III”
“We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. Candida , Act I”
“Visits to Valhalla: The Ectasy And the Agony”
“My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity . Answers to Nine Questions (September 1896), answers to nine questions submitted by Clarence Rook, who had interviewed him in 1895”
“No public man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means ; and I have no reason to hope that Mr Coote may be an exception to the rule. "The Living Pictures", The Saturday Review , LXXIX (April 6, 1895), 443; reprinted in Our Theatres in the Nineties (1932). Vol. 1. London: Constable & Co. 79”
“Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it... In The World (18 July 1894), Music in London 1890”
“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it... In The World”
“Philosophic Radicals ,”