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In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.

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
Matters
Style
Matter
Important
Unimportant
Sincerity
Essential
Essentials

More quotes by Oscar Wilde

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I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.
Oscar Wilde
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He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression.
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Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.
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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.
Oscar Wilde
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To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist - the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar.
Oscar Wilde
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I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. Don't degrade me into the position of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Oscar Wilde
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It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.
Oscar Wilde
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I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. ... Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.
Oscar Wilde
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There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
Oscar Wilde
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When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.
Oscar Wilde
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The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.
Oscar Wilde
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A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say at the age of eighteen.
Oscar Wilde
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The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
Oscar Wilde
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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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Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
Oscar Wilde
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True contentment is not having everything, but in being satisfied with everything you have.
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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One has a right to judge a man by the effect he has over his friends.
Oscar Wilde
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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.
Oscar Wilde
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We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.
Oscar Wilde