Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wildewas an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 October 1854
CityDublin, Ireland
CountryIreland
An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young
Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.
By persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. Men should be more careful.
How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old! For this--for this--I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!
A man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world. The future belongs to the dandy. It is the exquisites who are going to rule.
A misanthrope I can understand - a womanthrope never
It is well for our vanity that we slay the criminal, for if we suffered him to live he might show us what we had gained by his crime.
The gaudy leonine sunflower Hangs black and barren on its stalk, And down the windy garden walk The dead leaves scatter,- hour by hour
I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
On refusing to make alterations to one of his plays: Who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances