Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish author, poet and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential dramatists in London in the early 1890s. He was a key figure in the emerging Aestheticism movement of the late 19th century and is regarded by many as the greatest playwright of the Victorian era. Wilde is best known for his Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), his epigrams, plays and bedtime stories for children, as well as his criminal conviction in 1895 for gross indecency for homosexual acts.

Quotes

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Poetry, Writing
One's real life is often the life that one does not lead.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

Drinking
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

Simplicity
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

Friendship
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.

Emotions
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Religion
I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.

Belief
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

Children
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

Nobility
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Age, Youth
Do not speak ill of society, Algie. Only people who can't get in do that.

Society

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