"Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different."
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Quote collection
Oscar Wilde quotes (page 32 of 93)
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"It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection."
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"A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want."
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"The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain."
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"The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action."
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"We are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent."
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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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"In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. We tread out the grapes, another drinks the wine. We sow the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free."
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"Literature always anticipates life. It doesn't copy it but moulds it to it's purpose."
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"People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity."
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"It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way."
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"In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody."
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"Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is."
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"I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die."
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"What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise [in the future. But only if we set out to make this true and anticipate it so we look for the blessings until we find them]."
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"What consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure. Repentance is quite out of date."
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"What of Art? -It is a malady. --Love? -An Illusion. --Religion? -The fashionable substitute for Belief. --You are a sceptic. -Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith. --What are you? -To define is to limit."
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"Extravagance is the luxury of the poor; penury is the luxury of the rich."
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"Progress is the realization of utopia."
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"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."
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