The Writings of Oscar Wilde ...A. R. Keller & Company, Incorporated, 1907 |
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Common terms and phrases
absolutely ALBEMARLE CLUB Allonby American archæology beautiful things become called century charming civilised costume CRITIC AS ARTIST DECAY OF LYING decorative delightful disciples dress emotion England English ethical everything expression fact fancy form and colour give Greek Henry Wotton Hermit husband ideal ideal arts imagination Individualism intellect Lady Stutfield LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN lecture live London look Lord Illingworth marriage married matter means mediæval ment merely mind mode modern moral mystery Nature never nowadays ologist one's Oscar Wilde pain painting passion personality Phidias Plato play pleasure poet poetry Prince Hamlet prison purple and pearls rage of Caliban realise Renaissance revealed romance secret secret vices sense Shakespeare simply society sorrow soul spirit stupid talk tell thou hast thought tion tragedy true truth ugly virtues vulgar woman women wonderful worship young Robber
Popular passages
Page 28 - A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
Page 141 - THE first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered. Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
Page 34 - You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
Page 106 - It is the first time in my life that I have ever been reduced to such a painful position, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of the kind.
Page 122 - To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.
Page 96 - Disloyalty would be as impossible to him as deception. But even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less than Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to.
Page 5 - My own experience is that the more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.
Page 1 - There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Page 123 - Nature is no great mother ,who has borne us. She is our creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us.
Page 119 - All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them into ideals. Life and Nature may sometimes be used as part of Art's rough material, but before they are of any real service to art they must be translated into artistic conventions.