The Sayings of Oscar Wilde

by Oscar Wilde

It is impossible to imagine the universe, someone said, without Wilde’s epigrams. Their secret is that they can be at once true and false. As we absorb the paradox, our view of life is extended and enlarged.
Here, in small compass, is a collection of more than 400 of Wilde’s best sayings, culled from his plays and other writings. Wilde’s wit is never ponderous or pretentious. Like Falstaff, Wilde is not only gay himself but the inspiration of gaiety in others.

Genres: Classics

64 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 17, 1997

About the author

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging 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.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, 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 what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Wilde returned to drama, writing Salome (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Undiscouraged, 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 An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

Reviews

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nihilistic, fatalistic, very misogynistic — also relatively misanthropic, and kind of obtuse.

The only positive thing here really is that "to love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." Wilde really did not love himself enough (echoes John Bayley's introduction). The self-hatred is evident, which is fine, given the misanthropy, but there's no point in pretending he was happy at all.

I don't really recommend. Poor soul needs to be left dead in peace. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[Lewis Szymanski · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't the sayings of Oscar Wilde, it's primarily the sayings of Oscar Wilde's characters. If you can't tell the difference between what an author's characters say and believe, and what the author says and believes, you are not going to have a good time with this.

"They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris."
"Really! And where do bad Americans go when they die?"
"They go to America."
-The Picture of Dorian Gray, chapter three

If this book had better quotes and provided better context, I would have given it more stars.

[Sean Haughton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll never forget pulling an old copy of The Sayings of Oscar Wilde from a library shelf in my 2nd year at Uni and being out of breath by the time I reached the bottom of the first page. You know its special when you're breathless due to a combination of laughter and awe.

Use this as an introduction to Oscar's works, and a reference point for genius.