I'm Much Too Modest A Person.

A Ready Means Of Being Cherished By The English Is To Adopt The Simple Expedient Of Living A Long Time. I Have Little Doubt That If, Say, Oscar Wilde Had Lived Into His Nineties, Instead Of Dying In His Forties, He Would Have Been Considered A Benign, Distinguished Figure Suitable To Preside At A School Prize-giving Or To Instruct And Exhort Scout Masters At Their Jamborees. He Might Even Have Been Knighted.

Posterity Will Surely Be Amazed, And I Hope Vastly Amused, That Such Slipshod And Unconvincing Theorizing Should Have So Easily Captivated Twentieth-century Minds And Been So Widely And Recklessly Applied.

People Do Not Believe Lies Because They Have To, But Because They Want To.

We Have Now Educated Ourselves Into A State Of Complete Imbecility.

When I Look Back On My Life Nowadays, Which I Sometimes Do, What Strikes Me Most Forcibly About It Is That What Seemed At The Time Most Significant And Seductive, Seems Now Most Futile And Absurd. For Instance, Success In All Of Its Various Guises; Being Known And Being Praised; Ostensible Pleasures, Like Acquiring Money Or Seducing Women, Or Traveling, Going To And Fro In The World And Up And Down In It Like Satan, Exploring And Experiencing Whatever Vanity Fair Has To Offer. In Retrospect All These Exercises In Self-gratification Seem Pure Fantasy, What Pascal Called “licking The Earth.