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Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .

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
First
Perhaps
Writing
Second
Life
Worst
Reading
Words
Action
Merciless
Firsts
Actions
Book
Tragedy

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The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance.
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Where your life leads you, you must go
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We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.
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Lord Darlington (LD): I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules. Lady Windemere (LW): If we had 'hard-and-fast rules' we would find life much simpler. LD: You allow of no exceptions? LW: None! LD: Ah, what a fascinating Puritan you are, LW. LW: The adjective was unnecessary, LD.
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George Moore wrote brilliant English until he discovered grammar.
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Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
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An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant as the case may be.
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Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow.
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To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.
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Just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising and lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweler.
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It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.
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I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.
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The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.
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I am Irish by race but the English have condemned me to talk the language of Shakespeare.
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The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not its growth and development.
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Oh, don't cough, Ernest. When one is dictating one should speak fluently and not cough. Besides, I don't know how to spell a cough.
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The secret of life is in art.
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To be in love is to surpass one's self.
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George Moore leads his readers to the latrine and locks them in.
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Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.
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