Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
死亡和庸俗是十九世纪仅有的无法用巧辩逃避的东西。 Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. 爱国是恶人的美德。
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. 每次人们赞同我的时候，我都觉得自己一定错了。
I am not at all romantic. I am not old enough. I leave romance to my seniors. 我一点都不浪漫。我还不算太老。还是把浪漫留给比我老的人吧。
Wicked women bother one. Good women bore one. That is the only difference between them.
坏女人给我麻烦。好女人令我厌烦。这就是她们唯一的不同。
Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes. 每个人犯了错误，都自称是经验。
——经验是一个人给自己所犯的错误取的名字。
And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Literary and Other Notes I, Woman's World (November 1887)
时尚是一种让人难以忍受的丑陋，以至于我们不得不每六个月就更改一次。 ——时装丑陋得完全令人无法容忍，以至于我们必须每6个月就改变它的样式。
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction. 男人的面孔是他的自传，女人的面容是她的幻想作品。
There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.
女人的生活中只有一个真正的悲剧：她总在缅怀过去，却必须活在未来。 [待继续润色] We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow. 我们教给人们如何记忆，却从来不教他们如何成长。
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success. -The Soul of Man under Socialism (1881) 任何人都能对朋友的不幸感到同情，但要消受一个春风得意的朋友，则需要非常优良的天性。 -《社会主义下人的灵魂》
\-Lord Arthur Savile's Crime
如果一个女人不能让她犯的错误变得迷人，她就只是一个雌性动物。 -《亚瑟·萨维尔勋爵的罪行》
\qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.\
-Lord Arthur Savile's Crime
大多数男人和女人被强迫扮演他们没有能力扮演的角色。我们的吉尔登斯吞为我们演哈姆雷特，而我们的哈姆雷特必须像霍尔王子一样来说笑。这个世界是个舞台，但角色被分配得很糟糕。 --《亚瑟·萨维尔勋爵的罪行》
*注：吉尔登斯吞，霍尔王子均为莎士比亚作品中人物
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
不够真诚是危险的，太真诚则绝对是致命的。
A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies. 一个人在选择他的敌人时，再小心也不为过。
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
所有女人都会变得像她们的母亲一样，这是女人的悲剧。但没有男人变得像他们的父亲，这是男人的悲剧。
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
美国是唯一一个直接从野蛮进入颓废、中间没有经过文明阶段的社会。 Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing. 要避免争论，争论总是俗不可耐，而且常常令人信服。
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
只要一个女人看上去比她自己的女儿小十岁，她就一定会心满意足。 Bad artists always admire each other's work. 糟糕的画家总是欣赏彼此的作品。
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
男女之间不可能存在友谊，有的只是爱恨情仇。 Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. 良心和怯懦其实是一回事。
Dammit sir, it's your duty to get married. You can't be always living for pleasure.
该死，先生，结婚是你的职责，你不能总是逍遥快活。
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
民主就是指人民用人民的大头棒打击人民。
Don't give a woman advice; one should never give a woman anything she can't wear in the evening.
不要给女人忠告；决不要给女人任何她晚上不能穿戴的东西。
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
教育是一件可敬的事，但要时刻牢记，没有什么值得知道的事是教得会的。 I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.
我喜欢政治晚会，这是唯一人们不谈政治的地方。 I am not young enough to know everything. 我还没有年轻到什么都懂的地步。
I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I’m saying.
我简直太聪明了，有时连我自己都不知道自己在说什么。
I have made an important discovery…that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effects of intoxication.
我有一个重大发现——如果摄入足量酒精，就会产生各种陶醉的效果。 I like talking to a brick wall, it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me.
我喜欢对一堵墙说话，世界上只有它不会反驳我。 I love acting. It is so much more real than life. 我喜欢演戏。与人生相比，演戏更真实。
I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed. 我经常锻炼。只是昨天我是在床上吃的早饭。
I think that God, in creating Man, somewhat overestimated his ability. 我想，上帝在创造人类时高估了他的能力。
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
我整个早上都在校对自己的一首诗，我去掉了一个逗号。下午我又把它加上去了。 Ignorance is like a delicate flower: touch it and the bloom is gone. 无知就像是一朵精致的花朵：摸一下，它就消失了。
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information. 这是一件很悲哀的事——如今几乎没有无用的信息。
It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.
美丽要比善良好，善良要比难看强。
It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.
所有人类的重大问题都有一个共同点：没有点幽默和疯狂是没办法解决的。 It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. 争论者损失的只是智力。
It is very easy to endure the difficulties of one's enemies. It is the successes of one's friends that are hard to bear.
来自敌人的困难可以忍，来自朋友的成功则无可忍。
Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
人生就是一件蠢事追着另一件蠢事而来，而爱情则是两个蠢东西追来追去。 Like dear St Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success.
就像亲爱的圣芳济一样，我也和贫穷联姻，但我的婚姻并不成功。
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
结婚是想象战胜了理智，再婚是希望战胜了经验。
Music makes one feel so romantic—at least it always gets on one's nerves, which is the same thing nowadays.
音乐让人感觉非常浪漫，至少让人感觉不安，如今两者是一回事。
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating. 没有女人应该对她的年龄十分准确。这显得有些精于算计。
One should never trust a woman who tells her real age. If she tells that, she'll tell anything.
一个人决不应该相信说出自己真实年龄的女人。如果她把这都说出来了，那她什么都会说。 Tell the cook of this restaurant with my compliments that these are the very worst sandwiches in the whole world, and that when I ask for a watercress sandwich I do not mean a loaf with a field in the middle of it.
请转告我对这家饭店厨师的赞誉，这是全世界最糟糕的三明治了，还有，我点的是豆瓣菜三明治，我并不是要面包片中夹一块菜田。 The basis of optimism is sheer terror. 乐观的基础完全是恐惧。
The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden…It ends with Revelations.
《生命之书》始于一座花园里的一男一女……它最后以《启示录》告终。 The difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
报纸和文学的区别是，报纸没法读，而文学则没人读。
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
对于忠告，你所能做的，就是把它奉送给别人，忠告从来就不是给自己准备的。 The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. 摆脱诱惑的唯一方法是屈服于它。
The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster. 演出相当成功，但观众则是一场灾难。 This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last. 悬念是可怕的。我希望它一直延续下去。 Time is a waste of money. 时间是一种对金钱的浪费。
Thirty five is a very attractive age; London society is full of women who have of their own free choice remained thirty-five for years. 三十五岁是一个非常有吸引力的年龄；伦敦社交圈内满是这样好多年一直保持三十五岁的女人，她们可以自由地挑来选去。
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
失去一个父母可以看成是一种不幸；失去双亲看上去就像是一种粗心了。 When good Americans die they go to Paris. When bad Americans die they go to America.
当美国的好人死了，他们就去巴黎。当美国的坏蛋死了，他们就去美国。 All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
所有糟糕的诗歌都源于真情实感。自然化的作品其内涵是显而易见的，而显而易见的内涵并不艺术。
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
恭维话从来没有让女人缴械，但可以让男人缴械。这就是性别差异。
Women have a much better time than men in this world. There are far more things forbidden to them.
女人在世上的日子要比男人好过得多。她们有太多禁忌。
Women love men for their defects; if men have enough of them women will forgive them everything, even their gigantic intellects.
女人因为男人的缺点而爱男人；如果男人的缺点足够多，女人什么事都可以原谅他们，哪怕是他们的智力。
Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
女人代表着物质战胜了理智，正如男人代表着理智战胜了道德。 A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. 一个人倘若不为自己思考，那就从未思考过。
Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.
年轻人想有信仰，但他们却没有；老年人不想有信仰，但却办不到。 Ambition is the last refuge of the failure. 雄心壮志是失败最后的避难所。
An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him. 一个极其优秀的人。他没有敌人，而他的朋友也没有一个喜欢他的。