Oscar Wilde
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"Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde" was an Irish people/Irish writer and Irish poetry/poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.

Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish people/Anglo-Irish Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university, Wilde read Literae Humaniores#Greats/Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Trinity College, Dublin/Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford/Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day.

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She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.

I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices.

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others.

Crying is the refuge of plain women, but the ruin of pretty ones.

Dreamers can find their way by moonlight and their only punishment is that they see the dawn before the rest of the world.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

He has never written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling I have always cultivated.

To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.

Philanthropy is the refuge of rich people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures.

Brothers? Oh, I hate brothers. My older brother just doesn't know when to die, and my younger brothers seem to do nothing but.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's.

I don't play accurately-any one can play accurately- but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.

People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Action is the last refuge of those who cannot dream.

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live.

The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only the shallow people who do not judge by appearances.

Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.

Life imitates art more than art imitates life.

Imagination is a quality given to man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humaor is provided to console him from what he is.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

He hadn't a single redeeming vice.

The only charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties.

Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.

Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

The very essence of love is uncertainty.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.

Sometimes it takes courage to give into temptation.

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.

A woman begins by resisting a man's advances, and ends by blocking his retreat.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

A woman who cannot make her mistakes charming, is only a female.

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

Punctuality is the thief of time.

The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to death. One or the other has to go.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Philanthropic people lose all sense of Humanity, it is their distinguishing characteristic.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

There is no sin except stupidity.

Vile deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air, it is only what is good in man, that wastes and withers there.

The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.

Experience...is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well worth remembering from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is fatal.

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.

I have the simplest of tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk.

Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not.

Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.

One's real life is often the life that one does not lead.

I can resist anything but temptation.

If England treats her criminals the way she has treated me, she doesn't deserve to have any.

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.

We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made.

But what is the difference between literature and journalism? ...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.

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. All art is quite useless.

We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices.

Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.

Only the shallow know themselves.

It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.

Action: the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.

I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

Oh! don't use big words. They mean so little.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.

My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm.

What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately.

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.

Work is the curse of the drinking class.

I have nothing to declare but my genius.

Anybody can sympathise with the suffering of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.

About foxhunting: The unspeakable chasing the uneatable.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.

Do not speak ill of society, Algie. Only people who can't get in do that.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

Divorces are made in heaven.

...my dear boy, no woman is a genius. They 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.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

A grand passion is the privelege of people who have nothing to do.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.

Knowledge would be fatal, it is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things beautiful.

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.

The only excuse for creating something useless is that one admires it intensely.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It's the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different.

Art is the most intense form of individualism that the world has known.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.

Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.

Being natural is simply a pose.

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist.

When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.

Beauty is a form of genius-is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their own peril.

When I was young, I thought money was the most important thing in life. Now, when I'm old, I know it is.

Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

Like dear St. Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success.

They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all.

The problem with the common person is that he is so unbearably common!

But I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.

Chastity is the greatest form of perversion.

Oscar Wilde: 'I wish I had said that.' Whistler: 'You will, Oscar; you will.

Everyone who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, None knew so well as I: For he who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die.

Wisdom comes with winters.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first is personality, which no one should copy; the second is perfection, which all should aim at.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

The basis for optimism is sheer terror.

Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

Science is the record of dead religions.

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Genius is born--not paid.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.

I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.

Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.

Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.

To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.

It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give really unbiased opinions, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

I suppose that I shall have to die beyond my means.

Sin is the only real colour element left in modern life.

The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women… merely adored.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike.

Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

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.

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

The only thing one never regrets are one's mistakes.

We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.

I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.

We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.

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. All art is quite useless.

Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

As long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have its fascinations. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.

Few of our modern novelists dare to invent a single thing. It is an open secret that they don't know how to do it.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex.

There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.

Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable.

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship; and it is by far the best ending for one.

Live the wonderful life that is in you.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Life is too important to be taken seriously.

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

Eduaction is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.