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The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

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
Truth
Complete
Never
Honor
Would
Pure
Life
Modern
Either
Tedious
Literature
Impossibility
Lying
Earnest
Simple
Rarely

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It is so easy to convince others it is so difficult to convince oneself.
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Lord Illingworth told me this morning that there was an orchid there as beautiful as the seven deadly sins.
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Extravagance is the luxury of the poor penury is the luxury of the rich.
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It is perfectly possible to get what you think you want and be miserable. It's possible too, to never get it but deeply enjoy the process of trying. In this world, there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
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To be popular one must be a mediocrity.
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But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.
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Any place you love is the world to you.
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Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable
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The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.
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Don't give a woman advice one should never give a woman anything she can't wear in the evening.
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Just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising and lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweler.
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Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
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In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
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The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air It is only what is good in man That wastes and withers there.
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It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
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A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
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It is personalities not principles that move the age.
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What the hell is an oboe?
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Dammit Sir, it's your duty to get married. You can't always be living for pleasure!
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One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
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