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The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.

Oscar Wilde

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Oscar Wilde
Age: 46 †
Born: 1854
Born: October 16
Died: 1900
Died: November 30
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Dublin city
Oscar O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
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Fact
Preventing
Use
Forms
Means
Authority
Facts
Expression
Art
Progress
Classics
Form
Public
Checking
Country
Beauty
Degrade
Mean
Free
Authorities

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Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualification.
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Its a beautiful woman's fate to be the subject of conversation where ever she goes
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We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.
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I find that forgiving one's enemies is a most curious morbid pleasure perhaps I should check it.
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A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection.
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Who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?
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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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I love the French language... it's a delightful language, especially to curse with. It's like whopping your ass with silk.
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The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach.
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Foxhunting... the unspeakable pursuing the inedible.
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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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To be popular one must be a mediocrity. Not with Women, said the duchess, shaking her head and women rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all. It seems to me that we never do anything else, murmered Dorian.
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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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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, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
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The final mystery is oneself... Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul.
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Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
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The only thing I can't resist is temptation.
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They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance
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Sin is the only real colour element left in modern life.
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Do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them. The past, the present and the future are but one moment in the sight of God, in whose sight we should try to live. Time and space, succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions of thought. The imagination can transcend them.
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