"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

Wilde, Oscar on Gossip
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"Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer."

Wilde, Oscar on Dreams
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"The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result."

Wilde, Oscar on Human Nature
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"To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability."

Wilde, Oscar on Goodness
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"If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism."

Wilde, Oscar on Goodness
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"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

Wilde, Oscar on America
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"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."

Wilde, Oscar on Food and Eating
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"Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment the universal."

Wilde, Oscar on Fashion
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"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

Wilde, Oscar on Fashion
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"Where there is no extravagance there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding."

Wilde, Oscar on Extravagance
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"Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness."

Wilde, Oscar on Dullness
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"Alas, I am dying beyond my means."

Wilde, Oscar on Death and Dying
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"Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong."

Wilde, Oscar on Popularity
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"How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say."

Wilde, Oscar on Hypocrisy
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"To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual."

Wilde, Oscar on Inaction
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"Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion."

Wilde, Oscar on Innocence
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"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."

Wilde, Oscar on Moderation
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"Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow."

Wilde, Oscar on Attitude
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"No great artist ever sees things as they really are, if he did he would cease to be an artist."

Wilde, Oscar on Arts and Artists
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"The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."

Wilde, Oscar on Plays
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"The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth."

Wilde, Oscar on Perfection
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"The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them."

Wilde, Oscar on Paradox
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"We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities."

Wilde, Oscar on Necessity
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"What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?"

Wilde, Oscar on Mind
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"My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all."

Wilde, Oscar on Maturity
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"If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life."

Wilde, Oscar on Loyalty
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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."

Wilde, Oscar on Appearance
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"The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all."

Wilde, Oscar on Intelligence and Intellectuals
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"Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it."

Bankhead, Tallulah on Uniqueness
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"One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art."

Wilde, Oscar on Dress
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"The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life."

Wilde, Oscar on Theater
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"Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art."

Stanislavisky, Konstantin on Love
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"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

Wilde, Oscar on Dreams
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"I can believe anything provided it is incredible."

Wilde, Oscar on Faith
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"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."

Wilde, Oscar on Genius
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"Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art."

Picasso, Pablo on Censorship
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"Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much."

Nabokov, Vladimir on Imagination
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"We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison."

Proust, Marcel on Memory
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"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

Wilde, Oscar on Life and Living
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"In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different."

Chanel, Coco on Uniqueness
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