It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar WildeThe sin was mine; I did not understand. So now is music prisoned in her cave, Save where some ebbing desultory wave Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand.
Oscar WildeIt is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously
Oscar WildeThe typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
Oscar WildeYou shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. living, as you all do, on other and by them, you need at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season.
Oscar Wilde