Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. Born October 16, 1854, in Co. Dublin, to professional and literary parents, Wilde was a spokesman for the late 19th-century Aesthetic movement in England, which advocated art for art’s sake.
Wilde is best known for his novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891)’ and his comic masterpieces ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and ‘The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)’. He was the object of celebrated civil and criminal suits involving homosexuality which lead to his imprisonment in 1895 to 1987.
In the final decade of his life, Wilde wrote and published nearly all of his major work. With exposure of a secret sin or indiscretion and consequent disgrace being the central design in many of his works.
On November 30, 1900, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde sadly died of meningitis following an acute ear infection. He was 46 years old when he passed away.
We remember and celebrate Oscar Wilde with some of his most famous quotes –
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell the truth”
“I can resist everything except temptation”
“A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction”
“True friends stab you in the front”
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much”
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination”
“Everything in moderation, including moderation”
“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known”
“You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear”
“I am not young enough to know everything”
“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future”
“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying”
“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance”
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talking about, and that is not being talked about”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that it all”
“I can never travel without my diary, one should always have something sensational to read on the train”