Quote

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)

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
Stills
Sins
Shameful
Still
Gray
Corpses
Live
Image
Regarding
Thing
Sin
Painted
Defile
Make
Grace
Worms
Dorian
Always
Alive
Portraits
Corpse
Would
Beauty
Mars
Worm
Away
Canvas
Portrait

More quotes by Oscar Wilde

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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.
Oscar Wilde
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Live the wonderful life that is in you.
Oscar Wilde
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God grant me the serenity to accept that people are ignorant, the courage to uphold the law when I'm hostile, & the wisdom to realize that murder is illegal.
Oscar Wilde
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It is he who has broken the bond of marriage - not I. I only break its bondage.
Oscar Wilde
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It is a vulgar error to suppose that America was ever discovered. It was merely detected.
Oscar Wilde
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I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean.
Oscar Wilde
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Art persists, it timelessly continues.
Oscar Wilde
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Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.
Oscar Wilde
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If it took Labouchere three columns to prove that I was forgotten, then there is no difference between fame and obscurity.
Oscar Wilde
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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.
Oscar Wilde
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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.
Oscar Wilde
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In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.
Oscar Wilde
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I live constantly in the fear of not being misunderstood.
Oscar Wilde
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When one pays a visit it is for the purpose of wasting other people's time, not one's own.
Oscar Wilde
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Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.
Oscar Wilde
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You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that.
Oscar Wilde
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Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Oscar Wilde
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The final mystery is oneself... Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul.
Oscar Wilde
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It is awfully hard work doing nothing.
Oscar Wilde
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When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck men risk theirs.
Oscar Wilde