Oscar Wilde Quotes
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Anybody can sympathise with all the sufferings of the pal, nevertheless it involves an extremely great mother nature to sympathise by using a friend's achievement.
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I have grown tired of the articulate utterances of men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life, the Mystical in Nature this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely necessary for me to find it somewhere.
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I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.
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Salomé, Salomé, dance for me. I pray thee dance for me. I am sad to-night. Yes, I am passing sad to-night. When I came hither I slipped in blood, which is an evil omen; and I heard, I am sure I heard in the air a beating of wings, a beating of giant wings. I cannot tell what they mean .... I am sad to-night. Therefore dance for me. Dance for me, Salomé, I beseech you. If you dance for me you may ask of me what you will, and I will give it you, even unto the half of my kingdom.
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Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy Unload their gaudy senseless merchandise.
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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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A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it.
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I don't mind plain women being puritans. It is the only excuse they have for being plain.
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There is only good art and mediocre art.
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Out of the unreal shadows of night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off...
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Look at the moon. How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman. One might fancy she was looking for dead things.
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Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfilment or our experience. Life makes us pay too high a price for its wares, and we purchase the meanest of its secrets at a cost that is monstrous and infinite.
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Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.
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Cats are put on earth to remind us that not everything has a purpose.
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There are moments when art attains almost to the dignity of manual labor.
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In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself.
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When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.
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When both a speaker and an audience are confused, the speech is profound.
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What between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That's all that can be said about land.
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I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.
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Lord Illingworth: Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
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When good Americans die, they go to Paris" "Where do bad Americans go?" "They stay in America.
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You can have your secret as long as I have your heart.
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I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!