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

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attraction of others.

Morality
Men can be analyzed, women merely adored.
Everyone who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

Education
A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Enemies
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

Enemies, Forgiveness
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

Youth
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Miscellaneous

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