Oscar Wilde Quotes
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It is curious how vanity helps the successful man and wrecks the failure.
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I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity.
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I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.
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One should never trust a woman who tells her real age. If she tells that, she'll tell anything.
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Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
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As a wicked man I am a complete failure. Why, there are lots of people who say I have never really done anything wrong in the whole course of my life. Of course they only say it behind my back.
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We women adore failures. They lean on us.
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An alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory.
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When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
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It is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees.
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There can be nothing more frequent than an occasional drink.
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Fruitcake is like semen, there's a lot of it about but no one wants to swallow it.
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The fatal errors of life are not due to man's being unreasonable: an unreasonable moment may be one's finest moment. They are due to man's being logical.
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That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.
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It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with yourrose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame…
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Foxhunting... the unspeakable pursuing the inedible.
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It is absurd to say that there are neither ruins nor curiosities in America when they have their mothers and their manners.
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An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
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You and I will always be friends. Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that.
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We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.
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I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
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I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception.
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We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.
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At six o'clock we cleaned our cells, At seven all was still, But the sough and swing of a mighty wing The prison seemed to fill, For the Lord of Death with icy breath Had entered in to kill.