王爾德（Oscar Wilde，1854年10月16日－1900年11月30日），英國唯美主義藝術運動的倡導者，著名的作家、詩人、劇作家。其著名童話如快樂王子、夜鶯與玫瑰、小公主的生日，不同一般童話的快樂結局，最後多是以死亡作結，但不流於陰沉恐怖，而以悲劇帶出美的微妙距離。
而王爾德的同性戀審判是英國司法史上最引人注目的案件之一，也是同性戀平權運動史上被引用最多的案件之一。在同性戀不再被視為異端、被普遍接受的20世紀末、21世紀初，他成了同性戀社群的一個文化偶像。
天才橫溢的王爾德在1881年搭乘「亞歷桑納」號踏上美國時，甚至曾對著美國海關說，自己沒有任何物品需要申報，「什麼都沒有
，除了我的天才」( I have nothing to declare except my genius. )。其自負與大膽作風可見一斑。
***
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
憤世嫉俗者是一個知道所有東西的價格、卻不知道它們的價值的人。
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A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
夢想家只能在月光下找到自己的路，他的懲罰是第一個看見黎明。
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A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
不夠真誠是危險的，太真誠則絕對是致命的。
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A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
一個人在選擇他的敵人時，再小心也不為過。
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A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
一個詩人什麼都可以容忍，印刷錯誤除外。
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All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
所有女人都會變得像她們的母親一樣，這是女人的悲劇。但沒有男人變得像他們的父親，這是男人的悲劇。
***
Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.
永遠要寬恕你的敵人。沒有什麼比這更能讓他們心煩的了。
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America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
美國是唯一一個直接從野蠻進入頹廢、中間沒有經過文明階段的社會。
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Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
要避免爭論，爭論總是俗不可耐，而且常常令人信服。
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As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
只要一個女人看上去比她自己的女兒小十歲，她就一定會心滿意足。
***
Bad artists always admire each other's work.
糟糕的畫家總是欣賞彼此的作品。
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Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
男女之間不可能存在友誼，有的只是愛恨情仇。
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Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.
良心和怯懦其實是一回事。
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Dammit sir, it's your duty to get married. You can't be always living for pleasure.
該死，先生，結婚是你的職責，你不能總是逍遙快活。
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Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
民主就是指人民用人民的大頭棒打擊人民。
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Don't give a woman advice; one should never give a woman anything she can't wear in the evening.
不要給女人忠告；決不要給女人任何她晚上不能穿戴的東西。
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Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
教育是一件可敬的事，但要時刻牢記，沒有什麼值得知道的事是教得會的。
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Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.
經驗是一個人給自己所犯的錯誤取的名字。
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Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
時裝醜陋得完全令人無法容忍，以至於我們必須每6個月就改變它的樣式。
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How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
女人如何能期望會從男人那裡獲得幸福，如果他堅持把她當作一個完全正常的人。
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I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.
我喜歡政治晚會，這是唯一人們不談政治的地方。
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I am not young enough to know everything.
我還沒有年輕到什麼都懂的地步。
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I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I'm saying.
我簡直太聰明了，有時連我自己都不知道自己在說什麼。
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I can resist everything except temptation.
我可以抗拒一切，誘惑除外。
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I have made an important discovery…that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effects of intoxication.
我有一個重大發現——如果攝入足量酒精，就會產生各種陶醉的效果。
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I like talking to a brick wall, it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me.
我喜歡對一堵牆說話，世界上只有它不會反駁我。
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I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
我喜歡演戲。與人生相比，演戲更真實。
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I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.
我經常鍛鍊。只是昨天我是在床上吃的早飯。
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I think that God, in creating Man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
我想，上帝在創造人類時高估了他的能力。
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I was working on the proof of one of my poems all morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
我整個早上都在校對自己的一首詩，我去掉了一個逗號。下午我又把它加了上去。
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Ignorance is like a delicate flower: touch it and the bloom is gone.
無知就像是一朵精緻的花朵：摸一下，它就消失了。
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In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
世界上只有兩種悲劇，一種是一個人沒有得到他想要的，另一種是他得到了。
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It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
這是一件很悲哀的事——如今幾乎沒有無用的信息。
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It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.
美麗要比善良好，善良要比難看強。
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It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.
所有人類的重大問題都有一個共同點：沒有點幽默和瘋狂是沒辦法解決的。
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It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
爭論者損失的只是智力。
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It is very easy to endure the difficulties of one's enemies. It is the successes of one's friends that are hard to bear.
來自敵人的困難可以忍，來自朋友的成功則無可忍。
***
Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
人生就是一件蠢事追著另一件蠢事而來，而愛情則是兩個蠢東西追來追去。
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Like dear St Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success.
就像親愛的聖芳濟一樣，我也和貧窮聯姻，但我的婚姻並不成功。
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Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
結婚是想像戰勝了理智，再婚是希望戰勝了經驗。
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Music makes one feel so romantic—at least it always gets on one's nerves, which is the same thing nowadays.
音樂讓人感覺非常浪漫，至少讓人感覺不安，如今兩者是一回事。
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No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
沒有女人應該對她的年齡十分準確。這顯得有些精於算計。
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One should never trust a woman who tells her real age. If she tells that, she'll tell anything.
一個人決不應該相信說出自己真實年齡的女人。如果她把這都說出來了，那她什麼都會說。
***
Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.
請別開槍打死那個鋼琴師，他已經盡力了。
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Science is the record of dead religions.
科學是死去的宗教的記錄。
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Tell the cook of this restaurant with my compliments that these are the very worst sandwiches in the whole world, and that when I ask for a watercress sandwich I do not mean a loaf with a field in the middle of it.
請轉告我對這家飯店廚師的讚譽，這是全世界最糟糕的三明治了，還有，我點的是豆瓣菜三明治，我並不是要面包片中夾一塊菜田。
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The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
樂觀的基礎完全是恐懼。
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The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden…It ends with Revelations.
《生命之書》始於一座花園裡的一男一女……它最後以《啟示錄》告終。
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The difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
報紙和文學的區別是，報紙沒法讀，而文學則沒人讀。
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The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future.
聖人和罪人的唯一區別是，每一個聖人都有過去，而每一個罪人都有未來。
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The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
對於忠告，你所能做的，就是把它奉送給別人，忠告從來就不是給自己準備的。
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The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
擺脫誘惑的唯一方法是屈服於它。
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The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
演出相當成功，但觀眾則是一場災難。
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The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
公眾極其寬容，他們可以寬容一切，天才除外。
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There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
世界上只有一件比被人談論更糟糕的事，那就是沒人談論你。
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Thirty five is a very attractive age; London society is full of women who have of their own free choice remained thirty-five for years.
三十五歲是一個非常有吸引力的年齡；倫敦社交圈內滿是這樣好多年一直保持三十五歲的女人，她們可以自由地挑來選去。
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This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
懸念是可怕的。我希望它一直延續下去。
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Time is a waste of money.
時間是一種對金錢的浪費。
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To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
失去一個父母可以看成是一種不幸；失去雙親看上去就像是一種粗心了。
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To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
愛自己就是開始一場延續一生的羅曼史。
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True friends stab you in the front.
當面扎刀的是真朋友。
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When good Americans die they go to Paris. When bad Americans die they go to America.
當美國的好人死了，他們就去巴黎。當美國的壞蛋死了，他們就去美國。
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All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
所有糟糕的詩歌都源於真情實感。
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When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know it is.
當我年輕時，我以為金錢是人生中最重要的東西。現在我老了，我知道這是真的。
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When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
當天神想要懲罰我們，他們就答應我們的祈禱。
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Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
每當人們贊同我時，我總希望自己一定是錯了。
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Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
恭維話從來沒有讓女人繳械，但可以讓男人繳械。這就是性別差異。
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Women have a much better time than men in this world. There are far more things forbidden to them.
女人在世上的日子要比男人好過得多。她們有太多禁忌。
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Women love men for their defects; if men have enough of them women will forgive them everything, even their gigantic intellects.
女人因為男人的缺點而愛男人；如果男人的缺點足夠多，女人什麼事都可以原諒他們，哪怕是他們的智力。
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Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
女人代表著物質戰勝了理智，正如男人代表著理智戰勝了道德。
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Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.
年輕人想要有信仰，但他們卻沒有；老年人不想要有信仰，但卻辦不到。
萬源一譯
From 王爾德幽默名言
