Oct 16, 1854 - Nov 30, 1900
was an Irish writer and poet
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No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.
An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.
I can resist everything except temptation.
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
True friends stab you in the front.
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
It is a pity to make a mystery out of what should most easily be understood. There is nothing occult about the thought that all things maybe made well or made ill. A work of art is a well-made thing - that is all. It may be a well-made statue of a well-made chair or a well-made book. Art is not a special sauce applied to ordinary cooking; it is the cooking itself that is good. Most simply and generally, Art may be thought of as \'The Well Doing of What Needs Doing.\'
He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone.