Quote

He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression.

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
Strange
Stirred
High
Imports
Interest
Trivial
Cannot
Watched
Find
Develop
Trying
Afraid
Make
Expression
Things
Emotion
Import

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One should not be too severe on English novels they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.
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Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character.
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Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.
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I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.
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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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Art should never be popular.
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The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.
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The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
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Art only begins where Imitation ends.
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She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost.
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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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There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted.
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Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
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All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised.
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They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance
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Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.
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The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.
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The one advantage of playing with fire...is that no one ever gets singed. It is the people who don't know how to play with it who get burned up.
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The study of law is sublime, and its practice vulgar.
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A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.
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