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It is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees. It makes life too full of terrors.

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
Makes
Find
Everything
Terrors
Life
Symbols
Sees
Terror
Wise
Full

More quotes by Oscar Wilde

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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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The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
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When good Americans die, they go to Paris Where do bad Americans go? They stay in America
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As I lounged in the Park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used to look at everyone who passed me, and wonder, with mad curiosity, what sort of lives they led. some of them fascinated me. Others filled me with terror.
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I live constantly in the fear of not being misunderstood.
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To define is to limit.
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Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you will intensify its ecstasy.
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Civilization is not by means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.
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The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
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It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
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I am afraid that we are beginning to be over-educated at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching -that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to.
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It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.
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The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
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Each little thing that we do passes into the great machine of life which may grind our virtues to powder and make them worthless, or transform our sins into elements of a new civilization, more marvelous and more splendid than any that has gone before.
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Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
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A daughter is a mother's gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of herself. -Author Unknown As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
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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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Every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim.
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Some temptations are so great it takes great courage to yield to them.
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Greek dress was in its essence inartistic. Nothing should reveal the body but the body.
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