"The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful."
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Quote collection
Oscar Wilde quotes (page 58 of 93)
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"Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude."
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"A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it."
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"Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed."
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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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"Though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something."
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"No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style."
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"We have quite the same ideas. No; I think our ideas are quite different. But he has been most pleasant."
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"We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in Art."
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"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."
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"True love is just like regular love, but with more truth."
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"The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible."
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"Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly"
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"Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last."
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"If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it."
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"I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable."
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"The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out."
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"Sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of sympathy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain."
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"There is no such thing as romance in our day, women have become too brilliant; nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman."
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"Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt."
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