Quotes about Perception

People are so annoying. All my pianists look exactly like poets; and all my poets look exactly like pianists.

The only beautiful things, as somebody once said, are the things that do not concern us. As long as a thing is useful or necessary to us...it is outside the proper sphere of art.

Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.

I had been foolish in imagining that I had seen anything in it, more than that you were extremely good looking, and that I could paint.

Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry? asked the duchess after a pause. Especially when one has been wounded by it, answered Lord Henry.

The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.

I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back.  It makes me far too conceited. lord

That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people would want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfast cereals based on color instead of taste.

Ideals are dangerous things.  Realities are better.  They wound

And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

He was dreadfully short-sighted, and there was no pleasure in taking a husband who never sees anything.

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to some one else, if she is plain.