Oscar Wilde
Playwright
1854-10-16 – 1900-11-30
Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet, and essayist associated with late Victorian aestheticism. He is known for The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray. His wit and social satire made him one of the most quoted writers in English.
Books by Oscar Wilde
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The Canterville Ghost
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Quotes by Oscar Wilde
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I don't want to earn my living, I want to live.
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I'm a man of simple tastes. I'm always satisfied with the best.
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Society--civilized society, at least--is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef ... Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees...
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Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.
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We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces
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Man is many things, but he is not rational.
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It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us.
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Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef.
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Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions.
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Outside the family circle, papa, I'm glad to say, is entirely unknown. I think that is quite as it should be. The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man.
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Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.''You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.''Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?''Before either.''I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry,' said the lad.'Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?''I can't, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do.''Well, then you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.''I should like that awfully.'The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. 'I shall stay with the real Dorian,' he said, sadly.
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Perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place.
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The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice.
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I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows.
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So overjoyed were they at their deliverance that they laughed aloud, and the Earth seemed to them like a flower of silver, and the Moon like a flower of gold.
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There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.
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It is simply expression, as Henry says, that gives reality to things.
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Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better.
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Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known
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Life at times loses its sense of reality; it appears to us like a weird, optical illusion - a phantasmagoric bubble that will disappear at the slightest breath.
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