Oscar Wilde

 Born Oct 16, 1854    Died Nov 30, 1900

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet.   After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams and plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment which was followed by his early death.

 

True friends stab you in the front.

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

There is no sin except stupidity.

Only the shallow know themselves.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

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

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet . After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams and plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment which was followed by his early death.
Wilde's parents were successful Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At the university Wilde read Greats ; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin , then at Oxford . He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism , led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin . After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day.
At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry , the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas , prosecuted for libel , a charge carrying a penalty of up to two years in prison. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with other men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour . In 1897, in prison, he wrote De Profundis which was published in 1905, a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died in Paris at the age of forty-six.

Born 16 October 1854 Dublin, Ireland
Died 30 November 1900 (aged 46) Paris, France
Occupation Writer
Language English, French
Nationality Irish
Alma mater Trinity College, Dublin , Magdalen College, Oxford
Period Victorian era
Genres Drama, short story, dialogue, journalism
Literary movement Aestheticism
Notable work(s) The Importance of Being Earnest , The Picture of Dorian Gray
Spouse(s) Constance Lloyd (1884-1898)
Children Cyril Holland , Vyvyan Holland
Relative(s) Sir William Wilde , Jane, Lady Wilde