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We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
Oscar Wilde -
A beggar hates his benefactor as much as he hates himself for begging.
Oscar Wilde
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I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Oscar Wilde -
Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.
Oscar Wilde -
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde -
My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wise to separate. Ah! Moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me.
Oscar Wilde -
I wrote when I did not know life; now that I do know the meaning of life, I have no more to write. Life cannot be written; life can only be lived.
Oscar Wilde -
If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. but if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me, I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted so that I might share in what I was entitled to share. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation.
Oscar Wilde
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Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
Oscar Wilde -
To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.
Oscar Wilde -
The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
Oscar Wilde -
I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.
Oscar Wilde -
Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.
Oscar Wilde -
I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.
Oscar Wilde
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One should never make one's debut in a scandal. One should reserve that to give interest to one's old age.
Oscar Wilde -
I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.
Oscar Wilde -
To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.
Oscar Wilde -
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
Oscar Wilde -
Simple pleasures are always the last refuge of the complex.
Oscar Wilde -
Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.
Oscar Wilde
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Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Oscar Wilde -
The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.
Oscar Wilde -
It's beauty that captures your attention. Personality which captures your heart.
Oscar Wilde -
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
Oscar Wilde