Oscar Wilde Quotes
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There is a tiny yellow daffodil, The butterfly can see it from afar, Although one summer evening's dew could fill Its little cup twice over, ere the star Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold, And be no prodigal.
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Newspapers have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon.
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Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.
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An idea that isn't risky is hardly worth calling an idea.
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A man is called affected, nowadays, if he dresses as he likes to dress. But in doing that he is acting in a perfectly natural manner. Affectation, in such matters, consists in dressing according to the views of one's neighbour, whose views, as they are the views of the majority, will probably be extremely stupid.
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Really, this horrid House of Commons quite ruins our husbands for us. I think the Lower House by far the greatest blow to a happy married life that there has been since that terrible thing called the Higher Education of Women was invented.
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I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts.
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If a woman wants to hold a man she has merely to appeal to what is worst in him.
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I would not a bit mind sleeping in the cool grass in summer, and when winter came on sheltering myself by the warm close-thatched rick, or under the penthouse of a great barn, provided I had love in my heart.
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All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.
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There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that--perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims...
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When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
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Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy Unload their gaudy senseless merchandise.
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When both a speaker and an audience are confused, the speech is profound.
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He is fond of being misunderstood. It gives him a post of vantage.
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Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?
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One pale woman all alone, The daylight kissing her wan hair, Loitered beneath the gas lamps' flare, With lips of flame and heart of stone.
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I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house-tops.
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I know not whether Laws be right,Or whether Laws be wrong;All that we know who lie in gaolIs that the wall is strong;And that each day is like a year,A year whose days are long.
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There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience.
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Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation.
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Rugby is a game for barbarians played by gentlemen. Football is a game for gentlemen played by barbarians.
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If art is to have a special train, the critic must keep some seats reserved on it.
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One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.