"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
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Oscar Wilde quotes (page 52 of 93)
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"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions." "I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what is it; and for that the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray."
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"Yes, very sensible... People die of common sense, Dorian, one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment. There is no hereafter. So make it burn always with the hardest flame."
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"Nature....she will hang the night stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send word the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole."
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"Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that."
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"History is merely gossip"
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"The man with a clear conscience probably has a poor memory."
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"Jack: Actually, I was found. Lady Bracknell: Found? Jack: Uh, yes, I was in... a handbag. Lady Bracknell: A handbag? Jack: Yes, it was... [makes gestures] Jack: an ordinary handbag."
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"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."
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"It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done."
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"It takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing"
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"I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering."
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"I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself."
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"Every American bride is taken there [Niagara Falls], and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life."
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"In England ... education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and would probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square."
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"We call ours a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of any single thing. We have forgotten that water can cleanse, that fire can purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all."
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"Life is the art of being well deceived, and to succeed, it must be habitual and uninterrupted."
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"The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes."
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"I am a man of simple pleasures. The best suits me perfectly."
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"To be popular one must be a mediocrity."
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