Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]

We scoff at women who take us seriously, and we take tragically to those who scoff at us.

I cannot but destroy, or at least impair most seriously the clearness of our mental vision. [ H. P. Liddon ]

Science has been seriously retarded by the study of what is not worth knowing and of what is not knowable. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

When the million applaud you, seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; when they censure you, what good! [ Colton ]

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. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]

The world has always laughed at its own tragedies, that being the only way in which it has been able to bear them; consequently, whatever the world has treated seriously belongs to the comedy side of things. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

With us all is inconsistency. France, seriously speaking, is the country of wit and folly, of industry and idleness, of philosophy and fanaticism, of gaiety and pedantry, laws and their abuses, good taste and impertinence. [ Voltaire ]

Another underlying condition of contentment is not to take one's self, or even the affairs of life, too seriously. In looking back, every one can see how much unhappiness has been derived from an over-weening sense of one's importance. [ Henry D. Chapin ]