"The true artist is known by what he annexes, and he annexes everything."
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Oscar Wilde quotes (page 71 of 93)
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"Genius is born-not paid"
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"Wordsworth went to the Lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there."
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"The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things."
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"Twenty years of romance makes a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage makes her something like a public building."
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"Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."
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"When asked what he thought of sports, Oscar Wilde replied, "I approve of any activity that requires the wearing of special clothing."
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"The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1.322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26.911 words. The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read."
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"Im Krieg machen die Starken die Schwachen zu Sklaven, im Frieden machen die Reichen die Armen zu Sklaven."
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"The only sin is stupidity."
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"Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, Destiny never closed her accounts."
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"Where your life leads you, you must go"
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"Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!"
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"Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an extraordinary charm in them, sometimes."
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"Education is very admirable but let us not forget that anything worth knowing cannot be taught."
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"I wonder that no criminal has ever pleaded the ugliness of your city as an excuse for his crimes."
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"To be entirely free, and at the same time entirely dominated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life."
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"I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules."
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"The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving."
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"My philosophy? I'm always right and you are wrong."
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