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The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.

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
Artificial
Discovered
Duty
Second
Possible
Firsts
First
Life

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If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
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I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man.
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One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
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Women have a much better time than men in this world there are far more things forbidden to them.
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When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.
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Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, Destiny never closed her accounts.
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No art ever survived censorship no art ever will.
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It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
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Bad artists always admire each others work.
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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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The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.
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Art is rarely intelligible to the criminal classes.
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It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.
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And all, but Lust, is turned to dust In Humanity's machine.
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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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No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime.
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If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. But if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly.
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The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach.
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Art should never be popular.
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I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world… And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.
Oscar Wilde