Oscar Wilde Quotes
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Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.
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One must have some sort of occupation nowadays. If I hadn't my debts I shouldn't have anything to think about.
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Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.
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I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.
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To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.
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When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.
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Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.
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Liberty is the chosen resort of the artistic shopper.
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That very concentration of vision and intensity of purpose which is the characteristic of the artistic temperament is in itself a mode of limitation. To those who are preoccupied with the beauty of form nothing else seems of much importance.
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Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.
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It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.
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Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.
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I wonder that no criminal has ever pleaded the ugliness of your city as an excuse for his crimes.
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We are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent.
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I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.
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She is absolutely inadmissible into society. Many a woman has a past, but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and that they all fit.
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What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?
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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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Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterize modern thought, but Hamlet invented it.
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Life, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.
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I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.
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Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.
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That quite does for me. I haven't a word to say... Too much care was taken with our education, I am afraid. To have been well brought up is a great drawback nowadays. It shuts one out from so much.
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I appropriate what is already mine, for once a thing is published it becomes public property.