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All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised.

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
Quite
Degrades
Exercised
Degrading
Degrade
Authority
Exercise

More quotes by Oscar Wilde

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But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.
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Come, dear, [Gwendolen rises] we have already missed five, if not six, trains. To miss any more might expose us to comment on the platform.
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Love is a misunderstanding between two fools.
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Varnishing is the only artistic process with which Royal Academicians are thoroughly familiar.
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Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling.
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Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
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But what of life whose bitter hungry sea Flows at our heels, and gloom of sunless night Covers the days which never more return? Ambition, love and all the thoughts that burn We lose too soon, and only find delight In withered husks of some dead memory.
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There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.
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In England ... education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and would probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.
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The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance.
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I am happy in my prison of passion
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Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on.
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A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
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On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband's dinners.
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Who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?
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Women are made to be loved, not understood.
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The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived.
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The sky was pure opal now.
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The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
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Algy, you always adopt a strictly immoral attitude towards life. You are not quite old enough to do that.
Oscar Wilde