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Every one of course represents the spirit of his age, but there is an eternal aspect of the Spirit of every age which may be caught. To recreate the past from the mutilated fragments of the present is the task of the Historian.

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
May
Aspect
Recreate
Every
Eternal
Fragments
Present
Represents
Courses
Historian
Course
Task
Age
Spirituality
Spirit
Tasks
Past
Caught
Mutilated

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At six o'clock we cleaned our cells, At seven all was still, But the sough and swing of a mighty wing The prison seemed to fill, For the Lord of Death with icy breath Had entered in to kill.
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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
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I have a business appointment that I am anxious... to miss.
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Every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim.
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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.
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That is the mission of art - to make us pause and look at a thing a second time.
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Whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediaevalism.
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Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
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Do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them.
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We become lovers when we see Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet makes us students. The blood of Duncan is upon our hands, with Timon werage against the world, and when Lear wanders out upon the heath the terror of madness touches us. Ours is the white sinlessness of Desdemona, and ours, also, the sin of Iago.
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I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.
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What a silly thing love is! It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything and it is always telling one things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true.
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Bad artists always admire each others work.
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Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.
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Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
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An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.
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Youth is the only thing worth having.
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A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.
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A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
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Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.
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