【英文原著类】Shorter Prose Pieces(短篇散文集).pdf

SHORTER PROSE PIECES
SHORTER PROSE
PIECES
Oscar Wilde
1
SHORTER PROSE PIECES
PHRASES AND PHILOSOPHIES
FOR THE USE OF THE YOUNG
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.
If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the
problem of poverty.
Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.
A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.
Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of
dead religions.
The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance.
Dulness is ing of age of seriousness.
In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all
important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.
If one tells the truth one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
Pleasure is the only thing one should live for. Nothing ages like
happiness.
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the
memory of mercial classes.
No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime. Vulgarity is the conduct
of others.
Only the shallow know themselves.
Time is waste of money.
One should always be a little improbable.
There is a fatality about all good resolutions. They are invariably made
too soon.
The only way to atone for being occasionally a little overdressed is by
being always absolutely overeducated.
To be premature is to be perfect.
2
SHORTER PROSE PIECES
Any upation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct
shows an arrested intellectual development.
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.