Oscar Wilde Quotes
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I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.
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In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare's plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it.
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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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I should have remembered that when one is going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome meals.
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I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes of a country. Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.
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The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.
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I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.
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The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang-tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things.
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Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind.
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Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
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Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also the most irrelevant.
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If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.
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The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.
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A man who takes himself too seriously will find that no one else takes him seriously.
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All religious organizations exist to sell themselves to the rich.
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Ever since I met you I have admired you more than any girl...I have ever met since...I met you.
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I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering.
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Perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my life, a still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and directness of impulse. Not width but intensity is the true aim of modern art. We are no longer in art concerned with the type. It is with the exception that we have to do. I cannot put my sufferings into any form they took, I need hardly say. Art only begins where Imitation ends, but something must come into my work, of fuller memory of words perhaps, of richer cadences, of more curious effects, of simpler architectural order, of some aesthetic quality at any rate.
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He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should always be here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in the summer when we want something to chill our intelligence.
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No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
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But she is happiest alone. She is happiest alone.
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Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.
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Is it thy will that I should wax and wane, Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey, And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?
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There is no Mystery so great as Misery.