Oscar Wilde Quotes
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No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
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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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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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When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
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You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.
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We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body.
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It is personalities not principles that move the age.
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Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined.
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Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune.
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There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm.
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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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For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us.
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The best people to work for are me, myself and I.
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Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.
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I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips.
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A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
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Fashion rests upon folly. Art rests upon law. Fashion is ephemeral. Art is eternal. Indeed what is a fashion really? A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that we have to alter it every six months! It is quite clear that were it beautiful and rational we would not alter anything that combined those two rare qualities. And wherever dress has been so, it has remained unchanged in law and principle for many hundred years.
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Music is the perfect type of art.
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In a temple everything should be serious except the thing that is being worshiped.
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And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.
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There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America. It was not until I had seen the water-works at Chicago that I realised the wonders of machinery; the rise and fall of the steel rods, the symmetrical motion of the great wheels is the most beautiful rhythmic thing I have ever seen.
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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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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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The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.