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Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.
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No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
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It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
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Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.
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The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever.
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There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
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I was wrong. God's law is only Love.
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I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man.
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There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.
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Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
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When a man does exactly what a woman expects him to do she doesn't think much of him. One should always do what a woman doesn't expect, just as one should say what she doesn't understand.
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The first duty of life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one as yet discovered.
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We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.
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Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.
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Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance.
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The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.
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Loveless marriages are horrible. But there is one thing worse than an absolutely loveless marriage. A marriage in which there is love, but on one side only; faith, but on one side only; devotion, but on one side only, and in which of the two hearts one is sure to be broken.
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Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.
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There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
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A man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world. The future belongs to the dandy. It is the exquisites who are going to rule.
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Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
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To know anything about oneself one must know all about others.
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As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.