oscar-wilde

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
Oscar Wilde
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Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde
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I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
Oscar Wilde,The Happy Prince and Other Stories
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To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde
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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde,Lady Windermere's Fan
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If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Oscar Wilde
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It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
Oscar Wilde
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The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde,The Importance of Being Earnest
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The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde
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You can never be overdressed or overeducated.
Oscar Wilde
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Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.
Oscar Wilde,Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories
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Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde
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Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Oscar Wilde,The Critic as Artist
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I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.
Oscar Wilde
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A good friend will always stab you in the front.
Oscar Wilde
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Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Oscar Wilde
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I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde
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Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Oscar Wilde
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You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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The heart was made to be broken.
Oscar Wilde
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Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.
Oscar Wilde
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A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde
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You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.
Oscar Wilde
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I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
Oscar Wilde
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Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.
Oscar Wilde
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Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Oscar Wilde
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I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oscar Wilde,The Importance of Being Earnest
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The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Oscar Wilde,The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
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Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
Oscar Wilde,The Canterville Ghost
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Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde
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Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Oscar Wilde
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A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
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I can resist anything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde,Lady Windermere's Fan
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With freedom,  books,  flowers,  and the moon,  who could not be happy?
Oscar Wilde
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If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Oscar Wilde,The Nightingale and the Rose
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All women become like their mothers.  That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.
Oscar Wilde,The Importance of Being Earnest
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Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.
Oscar Wilde
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It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Oscar Wilde,Lady Windermere's Fan
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Who, being loved, is poor?
Oscar Wilde
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To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Oscar Wilde,An Ideal Husband
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I have nothing to declare except my genius.
Oscar Wilde
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The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Oscar Wilde
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I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Oscar Wilde
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After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.
Oscar Wilde,A Woman of No Importance
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Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wilde
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Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.
Oscar Wilde
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No good deed goes unpunished.
Oscar Wilde
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There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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To define is to limit.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Oscar Wilde,Lady Windermere's Fan
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A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
Oscar Wilde
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To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
Oscar Wilde
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Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Oscar Wilde
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Every woman is a rebel.
Oscar Wilde
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Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde
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Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.
Oscar Wilde
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Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.
Oscar Wilde,An Ideal Husband
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I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
Oscar Wilde
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The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.
Oscar Wilde
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I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
Oscar Wilde
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I like men who have a future and women who have a past.
Oscar Wilde
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Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Oscar Wilde
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Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.
Oscar Wilde
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Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life.
Oscar Wilde
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Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword
Oscar Wilde,The Ballad Of Reading Gaol
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How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being
Oscar Wilde
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There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Oscar Wilde
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The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
Oscar Wilde
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We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
Oscar Wilde
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A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
Oscar Wilde
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America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Oscar Wilde
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Youth is wasted on the young.
Oscar Wilde
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There is no sin except stupidity.
Oscar Wilde
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There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.
Oscar Wilde,Lady Windermere's Fan
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Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.
Oscar Wilde
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Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.
Oscar Wilde
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Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
Oscar Wilde
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Everything in moderation, including moderation.
Oscar Wilde
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Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.
Oscar Wilde,The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and Selected Critical Prose
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Men always want to be a womans first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What (women) like is to be a mans last romance.
Oscar Wilde
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Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.
Oscar Wilde
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One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.
Oscar Wilde
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The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.
Oscar Wilde
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Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
Oscar Wilde
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Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
Oscar Wilde
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Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Life is too short to learn German
Oscar Wilde
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The only good thing to do with good advice is pass it on; it is never of any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde,An Ideal Husband
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What of Art?
-It is a malady.
--Love?
-An Illusion.
--Religion?
-The fashionable substitute for Belief.
--You are a sceptic.
-Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.
--What are you?
-To define is to limit.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
Oscar Wilde,The Importance of Being Earnest
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I may not agree with you, but I will  defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.
Oscar Wilde
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Yes, death. Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace. You can help me. You can open for me the portals of death's house, for love is always with you, and love is stronger than death is.
Oscar Wilde,The Canterville Ghost
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Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
Oscar Wilde
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Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.
Oscar Wilde,An Ideal Husband
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This wallpaper is dreadful, one of us will have to go.
Oscar Wilde
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A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Oscar Wilde,The Critic as Artist
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The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
Oscar Wilde,Salome
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In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. (Mr. Dumby, Act III)
Oscar Wilde,Lady Windermere's Fan
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Some things are more precious because they don't last long.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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I dont say we all ought to misbehave. But we ought to look as if we could
Oscar Wilde
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Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties.
Oscar Wilde
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I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
Oscar Wilde
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Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde,The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde
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I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do - the day after.
Oscar Wilde
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Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Only the shallow know themselves
Oscar Wilde
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Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
Oscar Wilde
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You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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One should always be in love. That's the reason one should never marry.
Oscar Wilde
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The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.
Oscar Wilde
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The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
Oscar Wilde
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Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
Oscar Wilde
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Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly -- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion -- these are the two things that govern us.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Stories
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I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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All art is quite useless.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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They've promised that dreams can come true - but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.
Oscar Wilde
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Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.
Oscar Wilde
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There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde
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I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean.
Oscar Wilde
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Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is [hu]man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
Oscar Wilde
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She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.
Oscar Wilde
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A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
Oscar Wilde
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Everything popular is wrong.
Oscar Wilde
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Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.
Oscar Wilde
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Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Oscar Wilde
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I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Illusion is the first of all pleasures
Oscar Wilde
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The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks ones hearthearts are made to be brokenbut that it turns ones heart to stone.
Oscar Wilde,De Profundis
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She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.
Oscar Wilde,The Picture of Dorian Gray
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I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completelyor dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!
Oscar Wilde
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