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"Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy."
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"The distinction between pretending you are better than you are and beginning to be better in reality is finer than moral sleuth hounds conceive."
"And there, right in the middle of it, I find 'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven."
"Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are."
"Satan is never your well-wisher. Get the pleasure of making him annoyed on you by doing good deeds."
"Life is indeed terribly complicated-to a man who has lost his principles."
"If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn."
"For when once people have begun to believe that prosperity is the reward of virtue, their next calamity is obvious. If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue. Men will leave off the heavy task of making good men successful. He will adopt the easier task of making out successful men good."
Explore more quotes by Oscar Wilde
"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship."
"Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them."
"If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized."
"There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better."
"Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects."
"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead."
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