Oscar Wilde Quotes
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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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Love! What is love? It's nothing. It's just a word. It doesn't exist. Only pleasure is important.
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I hope you hair curls naturally, does it? Yes, darling, with a little help from others.
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Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects.
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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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Though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something.
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He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
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Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
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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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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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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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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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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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Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.
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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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There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted.
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Would you be in any way offended if I said that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection?
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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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Where there is no love there is no understanding.
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I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.
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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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The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.
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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.