Oscar Wilde Quotes
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The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public.
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In fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.... The Japanese people are ... simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art.
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Music is the perfect type of art.
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I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope.
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A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.
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The mind of a the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.
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The gaudy leonine sunflower Hangs black and barren on its stalk, And down the windy garden walk The dead leaves scatter,- hour by hour.
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Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleance me in the great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
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Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succeed there.
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In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.
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I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean.
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There is one thing infinitely more pathetic than to have lost the woman one is in love with, and that is to have won her and found out how shallow she is!
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The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.
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Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness.
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Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty.
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How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old! For this — for this — I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!
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I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.
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More women grow old nowadays through the faithfulness of their admirers than through anything else.
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The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.
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I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering.
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I have made an important discovery... that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effect of intoxication.
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The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love - that's the reason one should never marry.
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I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.
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I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five.