Oscar Wilde Quotes
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Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything. Yes, murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; and when they grow older they know it.
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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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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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The world belongs to the discontented.
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The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
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I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.
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Ah! That must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner.
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I have met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you're twenty minutes.
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Where there is no love there is no understanding.
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The chin a little higher, dear. Style largely depends on the way the chin is worn. They are worn very high, just at present.
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The camera, you know, will never capture you. Photography, in my experience, has the miraculous power of transferring wine into water.
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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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The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.
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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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Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects.
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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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Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef.
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He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
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Some temptations are so great it takes great courage to yield to them.
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When you really want love you will find it waiting for you.
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The only form of lying that is absolutely beyond reproach is lying for its own sake.
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Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.
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It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.