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The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.

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
Spectator
Dominate
Spectators
Art
Work

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A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.
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In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.
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I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.
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Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.
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The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.
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I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips
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Who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?
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Just because a man has died for it, does not make it true.
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The secret of life is in art.
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Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind.
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Who is that man over there? I don't know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him! -- hang him!
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Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
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Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.
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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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If you cannot write well, you cannot think well if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.
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Cleverness becomes a public nuisance.
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I wrote when I did not know life now that I do know the meaning of life, I have no more to write. Life cannot be written life can only be lived.
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Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.
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It is personalities not principles that move the age.
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The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.
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