Oscar Wilde Quotes
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To get back to my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
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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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Schools should be the most beautiful place in every town and village-so beautiful that the punishment for undutiful children should be barred from going to school the following day.
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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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Yes, very sensible... People die of common sense, Dorian, one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment. There is no hereafter. So make it burn always with the hardest flame.
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Memory is the diary that chronicles things that never happened or couldn't possibly have happened.
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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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Where there is no love there is no understanding.
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Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.
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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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No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.
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Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.
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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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I hope you hair curls naturally, does it? Yes, darling, with a little help from others.
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When you really want love you will find it waiting for you.
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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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America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
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I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. Don't degrade me into the position of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
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Some temptations are so great it takes great courage to yield to them.
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What a fuss people make about fidelity! Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.
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The bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering.
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Lean on principles, one day they'll end up giving way.
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Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.
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It is not good for one's morals to see bad acting.