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e1d4937
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It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements..
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Oscar Wilde |
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0821384
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Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
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literature
reading
humor
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Oscar Wilde |
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cc7acb6
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The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.
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Oscar Wilde |
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9bee0a5
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The error all women commit. Why can't you women love us, faults and all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all feet of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands..
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Oscar Wilde |
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eefdd81
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And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.
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moral
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Oscar Wilde |
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fcf4bab
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Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for..
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Oscar Wilde |
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9cd76dc
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Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
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inspirational
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Oscar Wilde |
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b0995fd
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I am happy in my prison of passion
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Oscar Wilde |
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cc55ce8
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The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.
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Oscar Wilde |
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2d56673
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I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.
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Oscar Wilde |
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5d9a1f7
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The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away.
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Oscar Wilde |
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8d5bf1c
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Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
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women
age
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Oscar Wilde |
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5ac7146
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The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gr..
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wealth
youth
intelligence
inspirational
dorian-gray
good-looks
oscar-wilde
stupid-people
curse
brains
gods
power
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Oscar Wilde |
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0c55313
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My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!
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Oscar Wilde |
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e7ca1a0
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Cecil Graham: What is a cynic? Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn't know the market price of any single thing.
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Oscar Wilde |
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26bc32c
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I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much
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Oscar Wilde |
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1f58735
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Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.
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Oscar Wilde |
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b0305ce
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My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
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gender-stereotypes
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Oscar Wilde |
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f03e55d
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I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is absolutely delightful to me.
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absurdist
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Oscar Wilde |
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2207e76
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He wanted to be where no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.
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Oscar Wilde |
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adcb155
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But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.
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oscar wilde |
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69892f1
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What fire does not destroy, it hardens
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inspirational
spiritual-growth
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Oscar Wilde |
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cd3fd57
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Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.
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Oscar Wilde |
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2fab844
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Oscar Wilde was suing the Marquis of Queensbury in 1895 for libel accusing Wilde of homosexuality
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Oscar Wilde |
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05116bc
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The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.
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Oscar Wilde |
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8894dd4
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Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
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morality
scandal
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Oscar Wilde |
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6d72b64
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A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.
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utopia
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Oscar Wilde |
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1e96e0e
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The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
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soul
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Oscar Wilde |
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d835963
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Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
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cowardice
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Oscar Wilde |
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550857a
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If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things.
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Oscar Wilde |
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efff418
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I like talking to a brick wall- it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!
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obdurate
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Oscar Wilde |
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72c61ce
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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.
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life
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Oscar Wilde |
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b266f7a
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I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws.
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Oscar Wilde |
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58de8d4
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There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especia..
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Oscar Wilde |
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022f7a8
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Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling.
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humility
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Oscar Wilde |
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f244596
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You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
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Oscar Wilde |
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8fd2773
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I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.
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Oscar Wilde |
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69e6e35
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I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life.
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life
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Oscar Wilde |
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a7e08a3
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Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in..
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nature
outsider
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Oscar Wilde |
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c423ffb
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My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect---simply a confession of failures. Faithfulness! I must analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many things that we would th..
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Oscar Wilde |
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8ce4a83
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It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed m..
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Oscar Wilde |
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86eaaef
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Well I won't argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things. That is exactly what things were originally made for.
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Oscar Wilde |
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3760015
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Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair.
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Oscar Wilde |
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cd92d97
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Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good.
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Oscar Wilde |