We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.


Oscar Wilde

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Would you want you as a friend?
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The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.
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I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
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Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.
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A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
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True friends stab you in the front.
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Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
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It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
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Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
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It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
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The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
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Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
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Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
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Writing bores me so.
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There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.
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Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.
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There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.
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In married life three is company and two none.
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Charity creates a multitude of sins.
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What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.
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If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.
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Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
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No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
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There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
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Everything popular is wrong.
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To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
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The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.
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Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.
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When a man has once loved a woman, he will do anything for her, except continue to love her.
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The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
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This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.
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His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except ...
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I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.
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He thinks like a Tory, and talks like a Radical, and that's so important nowadays.
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Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father...
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What a fuss people make about fidelity! Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It...
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They are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.
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The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.
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When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again it...
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Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin, but twenty years of marriage make her somethi...
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They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.
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On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American...
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Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.
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Once can survive everything nowadays, except death.
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For he who lives more lives than one: More deaths than one must die.
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I am dying beyond my means.
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The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
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I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.
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That does not seem to me to be a grave objection. Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London socie...
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Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art.
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Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends up blocking his retreat.
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They keep saying the right person will come along, I think mine got hit by a truck.
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I like men who have a future and women who have a past
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There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating --people who know absolutely everythin...
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If one tells the truth, one is sure sooner or later to be found out
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If you love somebody, let them go. If they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never...
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Punctuality is the thief of time.
OSCAR WILDE
If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.
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...music is the perfect type of art. Music can never reveal its ultimate secret. This, also, is the ...
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Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very m...
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None of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
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Experience is the name we give to our mistakes.
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A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes.
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The basis for optimism is sheer terror.
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A pessimist is an optimist with experience
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Good taste is the excuse I've always given for leading such a bad life.
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The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. -Oscar Wilde.
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What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?
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The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so...
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The fact is, you have fallen lately, Cecily, into a bad habit of thinking for yourself. You should g...
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Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our ...
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Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
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The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-?-brac shop, all...
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Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.
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It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everythi...
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I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
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In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby ...
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He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.
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In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.
OSCAR WILDE
As long as war is looked upon as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked on a...
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The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, w...
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Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
OSCAR WILDE
I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is si...
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To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies
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I drink to separate my body from my soul.
OSCAR WILDE
He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his...
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Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is w...
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As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have it's fascination. When it is looked upon a...
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Those whom the gods love grow young.
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In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefi...
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Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lum...
OSCAR WILDE
Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.
OSCAR WILDE
There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and he...
OSCAR WILDE
The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, wo...
OSCAR WILDE
Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
OSCAR WILDE
Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are re...
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To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be r...
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Nothing succeeds like success.
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When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.
OSCAR WILDE
An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.
OSCAR WILDE
Work is the curse of the drinking class.
OSCAR WILDE
Work is a refuge of people who have nothing better to do.
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If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
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Time is waste of money.
OSCAR WILDE
Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any othe...
OSCAR WILDE
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one'...
OSCAR WILDE
All that I desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far more than Art imi...
OSCAR WILDE
In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.
OSCAR WILDE
Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite...
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No great artist ever sees things as they really are, if he did he would cease to be an artist.
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Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice...
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Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.
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All art is quite useless.
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It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.
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The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
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There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. ...
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When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old,...
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There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the...
OSCAR WILDE
The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, educ...
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Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite en...
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In spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and the screaming of the rabbits in the hom...
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The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach.
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I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated serious...
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Art is not to be taught in Academies. It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes t...
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Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attraction of others.
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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 d...
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Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so oc...
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Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you wi...
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The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.
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There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.
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LORD GORING:
I am glad you have called. I am going to give you some good advice.
MRS. CHEVELEY...
OSCAR WILDE
LORD GORING:
My father told me to go to bed an hour ago. I don't see why I shouldn't give you ...
OSCAR WILDE
A poet can survive anything but a misprint.
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The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
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Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgi...
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Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect fo...
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Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.
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As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.
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People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about s...
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The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is...
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As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utteranc...
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The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generatio...
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That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating t...
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Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beau...
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I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across ... Please do not shoot t...
OSCAR WILDE
I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.
OSCAR WILDE
Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your...
OSCAR WILDE
Hatred is blind, as well as love.
OSCAR WILDE
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go
OSCAR WILDE
It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then mere...
OSCAR WILDE
Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and lit...
OSCAR WILDE
Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteent...
OSCAR WILDE
No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter enti...
OSCAR WILDE
The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of...
OSCAR WILDE
The old believe everything; the middle aged suspect everything, and the young know everything.
OSCAR WILDE
I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that...
OSCAR WILDE
And beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is ...
OSCAR WILDE
It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is a proper judge of it
OSCAR WILDE
Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem ne...
OSCAR WILDE
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
OSCAR WILDE
Misfortunes one can endure -- they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's ow...
OSCAR WILDE
Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
OSCAR WILDE
To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is...
OSCAR WILDE
Experience is the name we give to our past mistakes
OSCAR WILDE
Education is an admirable thing, but nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
OSCAR WILDE
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is...
OSCAR WILDE
The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of ...
OSCAR WILDE
And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness...
OSCAR WILDE
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
OSCAR WILDE