Quote

My dear Arthur, I never talk scandal. I only talk gossip. What is the difference between scandal and gossip? Oh! Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

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
Made
Gossip
Never
Dear
Morality
Merely
Difference
Arthur
Differences
Tedious
Talk
Scandal
History
Charming

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Most people are boring and stupid.
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A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
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Women are made to be loved, not understood.
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The birds did not understand a single word of what he was saying, but that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.
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The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.
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Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. You must find it in life and re-create it in art.
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A mask tells us more than a face.
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Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art
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An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.
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It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
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Men know life too early. Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.
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America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
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Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.
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People say sometimes that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
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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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Palermo was lovely. The most beautifully situated town in the world - it dreams away its life in the Conca d'Oro, the exquisite valley that lies between two seas. The lemon groves and the orange gardens were entirely perfect.
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It was you I thought of all the time, I gave to them the love you did not need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs.
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Education is very admirable but let us not forget that anything worth knowing cannot be taught.
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Things are in their essence what we choose to make them. A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.
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Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile.
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