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Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.

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
Artist
Admire
Art
Artists
Cannot
Large
Selected
Great
Truly
Conceive
Work
Conditions
Fashioned
Always
Beauty
Minded
Life
Call
Shown
Free
Prejudice

More quotes by Oscar Wilde

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What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. (Dorian Gray regarding his portrait)
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There are few things easier than to live badly and die well.
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One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.
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The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.
Oscar Wilde
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After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.
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Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
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Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.
Oscar Wilde
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I am very glad I have travelled. Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one's prejudices.
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Alone, and without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.
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In married life three is company and two none.
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Sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of sympathy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain.
Oscar Wilde
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Imagination is imitative-the real innovation lies in criticism.
Oscar Wilde
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She...can talk brillantly upon any subject provided she knows nothing about it.
Oscar Wilde
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I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean.
Oscar Wilde
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His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.
Oscar Wilde
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It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
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Psycholog­y is in its infancy, as a science. I hope in the interests of Art, it will always remain so.
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In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.
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Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect.
Oscar Wilde
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Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.
Oscar Wilde