Quote

To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.

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
Life
Security
Doubt
Belief
Engrossing
Dies
Lulled
Attention
Alert
Inspirational
Intensely
Live
Dull
Believe
Courage

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The camera, you know, will never capture you. Photography, in my experience, has the miraculous power of transferring wine into water.
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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.
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A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions, is the only temperament that can appreciate a work of art.
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It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.
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I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.
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I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.
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How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
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Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow.
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As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
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People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.
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Personality must be accepted for what it is. You mustn't mind that a poet is a drunk, rather that drunks are not always poets.
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Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs.
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Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
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True contentment is not having everything, but in being satisfied with everything you have.
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Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.
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Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners.
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Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
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When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.
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I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts.
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A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
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