Oscar Wilde Quotes
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I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.
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A virtuous abstinence from the joys of pederasty comes most easily to those who have no taste for it.
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In love, it is better to know and be disappointed, than to not know and always wonder.
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There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannises over the body. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.
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The world belongs to the discontented.
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The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man That wastes and withers there; Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate And the Warder is Despair.
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You can never be overdressed or overeducated.
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Ah, nowadays we are all of us so hard up, that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay.
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Though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something.
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Lean on principles, one day they'll end up giving way.
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There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.
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It is to do nothing that the elect exist. Action is limited and relative. Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him who sits at ease and watches, who walks in loneliness and dreams.
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I am a man of simple pleasures. The best suits me perfectly.
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The only thing that the artist cannot see is the obvious. The only thing that the public can see is the obvious...
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Pleasure is the test of nature, its approval sign.
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An entirely new factor has appeared in the social development of the country, and this factor is the Irish-American, and his influence. To mature its powers, to concentrate its action, to learn the secret of its own strength and of England's weakness, the Celtic intellect has had to cross the Atlantic. At home it had but learned the pathetic weakness of nationality; in a strange land it realised what indomitable forces nationality possesses. What captivity was to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish: America and American influence have educated them.
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Men know life too early. Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.
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It is not good for one's morals to see bad acting.
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I have nothing to declare but my genius, and this four-kilo bag of cocaine.
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Married men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.
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Children have a natural antipathy to books - handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.
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That beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is to say unless we are content to be less than men.
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Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last.
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Life is like a box of terrible analogies...