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

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Her love was trembling in laughter on her lips.
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I expect I shall have to die beyond my means.
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The youth of the present day are quite monstrous. They have absolutely no respect for dyed hair.
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Genius lasts longer than beauty
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With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?
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Reported as Oscar Wilde's last words on his death bed... This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go.
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Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them
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Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval.
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Then there was a man who said, 'I never knew what real happiness was until I got married by then it was too late'
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However, I think anything is better than high intellectual pressure. That is the most unbecoming thing there is. It makes the noses of the young girls so particularly large.
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The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happy married life.
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Just as the philanthropist is the nuisance of the ethical sphere, so the nuisance of the intellectual sphere is the man who is so occupied in trying to educate others, that he has never had any time to educate himself.
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Mothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chap's bills and don't bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills.
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I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.
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She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.
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Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.
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All love is true, but not all truth ... is love?
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If art is to have a special train, the critic must keep some seats reserved on it.
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Just because a man has died for it, does not make it true.
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