Oscar Wilde Quotes
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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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Just as the philanthropist is the nuisance of the ethical sphere, so the nuisance of the intellectual sphere is the man who is so occupied in trying to educate others, that he has never had any time to educate himself.
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Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.
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On refusing to make alterations to one of his plays: Who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?
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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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And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not? And I don't like that. It makes men so very attractive.
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The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.
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Before Turner there was no fog in London.
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The real weakness of England lies, not in incomplete armaments or unfortified coasts, not in the poverty that creeps through sunless lanes, or the drunkenness that brawls in loathsome courts, but simply in the fact that her ideals are emotional and not intellectual.
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Formerly we used to canonize our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarize them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.
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Whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid.
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This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade. I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.
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When people talk to us about others they are usually dull. When they talk to us about themselves they are nearly always interesting.
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Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching.
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Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.
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Life cheats us with shadows. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us with bitterness and disappointment in its train.
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Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an extraordinary charm in them, sometimes.
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People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately.
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In a temple everything should be serious except the thing that is being worshiped.
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As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
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Self-denial is simply a method by which arrests his progress, and self-sacrifice a survival of the mutilation of the savage.
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She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy.
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Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age.
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God, bless me with luxury. Necessities I can do without.