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Abstinence
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Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.
-Oscar Wilde
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Action(s)
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To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
-Oscar Wilde
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Actors, Acting
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While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.
-Oscar Wilde
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Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
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I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
-Oscar Wilde
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Advice
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LORD GORING:
I am glad you have called. I am going to give you some good advice.
MRS. CHEVELEY:
Oh! pray don't. One should never give a woman anything that she can't wear in the evening.
-Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband: Act 3
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LORD GORING:
My father told me to go to bed an hour ago. I don't see why I shouldn't give you the same advice. I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
-Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband, Act 1
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Age
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MRS. ALLONBY: She told me yesterday, and in quite a loud voice too, that she was only eighteen. It was most annoying.
LORD ILLINGWORTH: One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.
-Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance
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The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
-Oscar Wilde
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No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
-Oscar Wilde
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I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.
-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, Lady Windemere's Fan, 1892
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That does not seem to me to be a grave objection. Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years. Lady Dumbleton is an instance in point. To my own knowledge she has been thirty-five ever since she arrived at the age of forty, which was many years ago now. I see no reason why our dear Cecily should not be even still more attractive at the age you mention than she is at present. There will be a large accumulation of property.
-Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (spoken by the character Lady Bracknell), 1893
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America
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America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
-Oscar Wilde
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America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
-Oscar Wilde
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The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.
-Oscar Wilde
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There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.
-Oscar Wilde
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Anarchy
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People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.
-Oscar Wilde
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Anger
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Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act according with the dictates of reason.
-Oscar Wilde
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Appearance
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It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
-Oscar Wilde
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Argument & Debate
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Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
-Oscar Wilde
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I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
-Oscar Wilde
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Aristocracy
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You should study the Peerage, Gerald. It is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.
-Oscar Wilde
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Art
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Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
-Oscar Wilde
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In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.
-Oscar Wilde
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Books by and about Oscar Wilde