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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Oscar Wilde
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July 21 - September 14, 2025
How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose.
I know, now, that when one loses one’s good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything.
Youth is the only thing wo...
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“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die.
If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!”
“I adore simple pleasures,” said Lord Henry. “They are the last refuge of the complex.
What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal.
Man is many things, but he is n...
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“Ah! this morning! You have lived since then.”
I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have all the surprise of candour.”
Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.”
“What a fuss people make about fidelity!”
Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.”
“I trust you.” “I wish I could trust myself,”
What I want is information: not useful information, of course; useless information.”
Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end.
If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.”
“She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.”
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”
Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.”
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence.
“I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable.
Well, 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.”
“I can sympathize with everything except suffering,”
There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores, the better.”
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.”
“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin.
“To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.”
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”
He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.
She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions.
It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage, don’t you think
I never talk during music—at least, during good music. If one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it in conversation.”
I always hear Harry’s views from his friends. It is the only way I get to know of them.
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“Never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair, Dorian,” he said after a few puffs. “Why, Harry?” “Because they are so sentimental.”
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
“I don’t think I am likely to marry, Harry. I am too much in love.
no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.
Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.”
As for conversation, there are only five women in London worth talking to, and two of these can’t be admitted into decent society.
You filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life.
I had a passion for sensations....
A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failure.
Faithfulness! I must analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it.
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that oth...
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The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us.
In art, as in politics, les grandpères ont toujours tort.”
