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by
Oscar Wilde
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.
Intellect is in itself an exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid.
It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit quietly and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your
It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.
"I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die.
What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed."
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
You are more to me than all art can ever be.
To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life.
I am tired of myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else."
He wanted to be where no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.
"Decay fascinates me more." "What of art?" she asked. "It is a malady." "Love?" "An illusion." "Religion?" "The fashionable substitute for belief." "You are a sceptic." "Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith." "What are you?" "To define is to limit."
"The only horrible thing in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.
As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.
