"Oscar Wilde"

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"The Picture of Dorian Gray"

I just started reading it for the first time in probably two decades, and just love this.

I also like "The Importance of Being Earnest" and others. Handbags etc.

Anyone else? Favourite quotes, experience of reading , etc?

I don't suppose I ever got around to actually reading Dorian Gray (I have read Earnest), but this quote always stuck with me:

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

Not sure how I feel about it, but it' still a good quote.

I've read The Picture of Dorian Gray and just couldn't put it down. I still want to read it in English.

Oscar Wilde quotations are amazing, here are some of my favourites:

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

"Genius is born--not paid."

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

"There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing."

"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."

Nico, thanks for that. Very enjoyable.

Thanks Averick Here are some more:

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."

"The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself."

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."

"But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all."

"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."

Funny, I always loved this one, but never knew it was his.



This is not so nice. I used this one to encourage someone on the dutch autism forum. It worked, I was proud of myself. Now it seems I probably stole it instead of making it up.

For some reason I have never finished Dorian Gray. I honestly don't know why, because I did like it. I should give it another try. A pity the biopic on Wilde did not turn out so great.

Some more of my favourites:

"I love acting. It is so much more real than life."

"One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing."

"There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up."

I've given up reading books. I find it takes my mind off myself.

I don't think I've read any of Oscar Wilde's " adult" literature; probably because his short stories reduced me to tears as a kid, and I'm too traumatised.

I love "The Picture of Dorian Gray"! It's one of my favorites and it's probably the first book that made me change my mind about traditional and older lit being boring.

I've wanted to read a biography on him for a while, he's an interesting guy. An online friend of mine and I became friends through Oscar Wilde fanish talk.