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The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

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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Relationship
Others
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Optimism
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Terror

More quotes by Oscar Wilde

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The sin was mine I did not understand. So now is music prisoned in her cave, Save where some ebbing desultory wave Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand.
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Learn to differentiate between ignorance and stupidity.
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It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.
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The moon in her chariot of pearl
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The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.
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I was disappointed in Niagara - most people must be disappointed in Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, 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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All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
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The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.
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Beauty ...is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.
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Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
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I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.
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What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. (Dorian Gray regarding his portrait)
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Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
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The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
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There are only two kinds of women, the plain and the coloured.
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If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well. If it is worth having, it is worth waiting for. If it is worth attaining, it is worth fighting for. If it is worth experiencing, it is worth putting aside time for.
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I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.
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Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it comes into existence.
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The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.
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In England ... education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and would probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.
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