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The reason we are so pleased to find other people's secrets is that it distracts public attention from our own.

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
Pleased
Secrets
Public
Secret
Attention
Reason
Find
People
Distracts

More quotes by Oscar Wilde

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Art persists, it timelessly continues.
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If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
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A woman's life revolves in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man's life progresses.
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It is perfectly possible to get what you think you want and be miserable. It's possible too, to never get it but deeply enjoy the process of trying. In this world, there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
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The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror.
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Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .
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My friend is not allowed to go out today. I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else's diary I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine.
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Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.
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A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.
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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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Do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them.
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To live in this world is a rare thing most people just exist.
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It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
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Shakespeare might have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the white streets of London, or seen the serving-men of rival houses bite their thumbs at each other in the open square but Hamlet came out of his soul, and Romeo out of his passion.
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Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They’re the only things we can pay.
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One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
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You can have your secret as long as I have your heart[.]
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The only sin is stupidity.
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It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.
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The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.
Oscar Wilde