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

More quotes by Oscar Wilde

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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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I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.
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She is a peacock in everything but beauty!
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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.
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Comfort is the only thing our civilization can give us.
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What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.
Oscar Wilde
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That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.
Oscar Wilde
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I walk the world in wonder.
Oscar Wilde
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Be yourself, because others are already taken.
Oscar Wilde
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Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one center of pain.
Oscar Wilde
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Art is rarely intelligible to the criminal classes.
Oscar Wilde
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Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
Oscar Wilde
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To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune to lose both looks like carelessness.
Oscar Wilde
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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.
Oscar Wilde
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What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.
Oscar Wilde
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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.
Oscar Wilde
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The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me.
Oscar Wilde
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The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde
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He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you?
Oscar Wilde
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Who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?
Oscar Wilde