Oscar Wilde
(1854-1900)
(1854-1900)
(Quoted from: BBC History)
Wilde was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright, poet and critic, and a celebrity in late 19th century London.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854. His father was a successful surgeon and his mother a writer and literary hostess. Wilde was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford. While at Oxford, Wilde became involved in the aesthetic movement. After he graduated, he moved to London to pursue a literary career.
His output was diverse. A first volume of his poetry was published in 1881 but as well as composing verse, he contributed to publications such as the 'Pall Mall Gazette', wrote fairy stories and published a novel 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' (1891). His greatest talent was for writing plays, and he produced a string of extremely popular comedies including 'Lady Windermere's Fan' (1892), 'An Ideal Husband (1895)' and 'The Importance of Being Earnest' (1895). 'Salomé' was performed in Paris in 1896.
Drama and tragedy marred Wilde's private life. He married Constance Lloyd in 1884 and they had two sons, but in 1891 Wilde began an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed 'Bosie'. In April 1895, Wilde sued Bosie's father, the Marquis of Queensberry, for libel, after the Marquis has accused him of being homosexual. Wilde lost and, after details of his private life were revealed during the trial, was arrested and tried for gross indecency. He was sentenced to two years of hard labour. While in prison he composed a long letter to Douglas, posthumously published under the title 'De Profundis' . His wife took their children to Switzerland and adopted the name 'Holland'. Wilde was released with his health irrevocably damaged and his reputation ruined. He spent the rest of his life in Europe, publishing 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' in 1898. He died in Paris on 30 November 1900
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”
“With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?”
“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
“No good deed goes unpunished.”
“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”
“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.”
“To define is to limit.”
“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.”
“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
“I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”
“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
“A good friend will always stab you in the front.”
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
“Yes: I am a dreamer. For 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.”
“I am not young enough to know everything.”
“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
“The heart was made to be broken.”
“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
“You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”
“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.
“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
“Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”
“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
“Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success.”
“The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.”
“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”
“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”
“There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.”
“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”.
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.”
“Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.”
“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”
“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.”
“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.”
“The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.”
“The only good thing to do with good advice is pass it on; it is never of any use to oneself.”
“Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.”
“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.”
“It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”