OSCAR WILDE
1854-1900
Irish playwright, poet and wit
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The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.


Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't the remotest knowledge of how 
to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.


We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

The artist must educate the critic.
(contributed by juliana )

He has nothing. He looks everything.  What more can one desire.


Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing
that is worth knowing can be taught.


To get back to one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.


The youth of America is their oldest tradition.  It has been going on now for three hundred
years.


To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.


A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.


I never travel without my diary.  One should always have something sensational to read 
in the train.


I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.


There is no sin except for stupidity.


High hopes were once formed of democracy, but democracy means simply the bludgeoning 
of the people, by the people, for the people.


A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite and a woman who moralises is invariably plain.


I suppose society is wonderfully delightful.  To be in it is merely a bore.  But to be out 
of it simply a tragedy.


One should always be in love.  That is the reason why one should never marry.


All art is quite useless.


The only thing that consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always 
gives himself for doing them.


Morality is simply the attitude we adopt to people whom we personally dislike.


Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed.  It is not fair that some men should be happier 
than others.


The only charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary
for both parties.


To lose one parent... may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like 
carelessness.


When one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself.  And one ends by deceiving others.  
That is what the world calls a romance.


There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman.  It's a thing no married 
man knows anything about.


A poet can survive everything but a misprint.


It is absurd to divide people into good and bad.  People are either charming or tedious.


Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything, and when they grow older, 
they know it.


One knows so well the popular idea of health.  The English country gentleman galloping after
after a fox.  The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.


I always pass on good advice.  It is the only thing to do with it.  It is never any good 
to oneself.


Murder is always a mistake - one should never do anything one cannot talk about after dinner.


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


Life is much too important a thing to talk seriously about.


People who want to say merely what is sensible should say it to themselves before they come 
down to breakfast in the morning, never after.


If we men married the woman we deserve, we should have a very bad time of it.


Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.


There is a good deal to be said for blushing, if one can do it at the proper moment.


Religion is the fashionable susbstitute for belief.


The only duty we owe history is to rewrite it.


Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.


Only the shallow know themselves.


Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness 
of others.


Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.


A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without 
paying for it.


When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.


I always choose my friends for their good looks and my enemies for their good intellects.
Man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies.


Anybody can make history.  Only a great man can write it.


Charity creates a multitude of sins.


Conscience makes egotists of us all.  


When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband.  When a man 
marries again, it is because he adored his first wife.  Women try their luck; men risk
theirs.


I can resist everything except temptation.


In this world, there are two tragedies.  One is not getting what one wants, and the other is
getting it.


For each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!


Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.  

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