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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
Means
Authority
Facts
Expression
Art
Progress
Classics
Form
Public
Checking
Country
Beauty
Degrade
Mean
Free
Authorities
Make
Fact
Preventing
Use
Forms

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Truth is independent of facts always.
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There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.
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The supreme vice is shallowness.
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It is curious how vanity helps the successful man and wrecks the failure.
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They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.
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Authority is quite degrading.
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The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror.
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Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne.
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How does one cure the soul? Through the senses
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Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.
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Women have a much better time than men in this world there are far more things forbidden to them.
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There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob all authority is equally bad.
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The final mystery is oneself... Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul.
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Everything popular is wrong.
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The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
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I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.
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Books are never finished, They are merely abandoned.
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I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.
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In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.
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I made your sorrow mine also, that you might have help in bearing it.
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