Oscar Wilde (1854–1900,) fully Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, was an Irish playwright, poet, essayist, editor, and author of many witty epigrams. Wilde’s dazzling ascension to notoriety also included his tragic fall from grace.
Wilde was born in Dublin. His father was a successful surgeon and his mother, a writer and a literary host. Wilde was educated at Dublin’s Trinity College and Oxford’s Magdalen College. After graduation, he moved to London to pursue a literary career, announcing, “I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous I’ll be notorious.”
Wilde’s output was diverse. The first volume of his poetry was published in 1881. He contributed to publications such as the Pall Mall Gazette, wrote fairy tales, and published a novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891.)
Wilde’s most exceptional talent was for writing plays, and he produced a string of extremely popular comedies including Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892,) Salome (1892,) An Ideal Husband (1895,) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895.)
Drama and tragedy stained Wilde’s private life. He married Constance Lloyd in 1884. Even when he loved his wife and adored his two sons, Wilde began an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of an aristocrat. This resulted in one of the most famous trials of the 19th century. Wilde lost a libel suit after being accused as a homosexual. The prosecution exposed many details of Wilde’s private life. He was arrested, tried for gross indecency, and sentenced to two years of hard labor.
When he got out of prison, he wrote his most celebrated poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898,) concerning inhumane prison conditions. With his reputation ruined, he wandered around France and Italy. His health declined rapidly, and he died penniless in a seedy Paris hotel at age 46.
Wilde is considered the world’s most fabulous wit ever. He was a brilliant conversationalist; anecdotes abound about his famous retorts. Once, when U.S. Customs asked him if he had anything to declare upon his arrival in New York, Wilde replied, “Nothing but my genius.”
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Oscar Wilde
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
—Oscar Wilde
The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Sickness, Disease
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Laughter, Friendship, Beginning
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Popularity, Gossip
The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Profanity, Vulgarity, Swearing
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Desire, Desires, Tragedy, Heart
To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist—the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one’s vinegar.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Cooking
The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Education
On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one’s mind. It becomes a pleasure.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Critics
The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Marriage
By persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. Men should be more careful.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Men
Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Despair
Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness.
—Oscar Wilde
Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Society, Self-Discovery
One should always play fair when one has the winning cards.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Justice, Gambling
When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it is.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Money
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Acting, Actors
The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Books, Literature
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Goodness, Optimism
There is only one real tragedy in a woman’s life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Women
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Fun
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Emotions
Lying, a telling of beautiful untrue things, this is the proper aim of art.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Art
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Miscellaneous, Food
A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Selfishness
My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Business
The English public, as a mass, takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Public
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Prison
To become a spectator of one’s own life is to escape the suffering of life.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Suffering
Life would be dull without them.
—Oscar Wilde
Topics: Mistakes
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