“One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.”

— Oscar Wilde

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

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Oscar Wilde 812

Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

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“How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.”

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“No one should be judge in his own cause.”

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Maxim 545
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“People should also not want to determine themselves causally in such a way: I will now … become good once and for all, and do good by nature, because I could not then do anything else. For through this one denies the freedom which can in each moment negate all the past. … One makes himself into an object when one establishes causality in that way; for a morality to which I have been compelled is already not a morality.”

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Collected Aphorisms

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