Born: October 16, 1854 | Died: November 30, 1900
Nationality: Irish | Genre: Classic Fiction, Drama, Satire
Oscar Wilde was a poet, playwright, and master of epigrammatic wit, celebrated for turning social comedy into a glittering mirror of late-Victorian life. A leading voice of Aestheticism, he paired style with subversive intelligence in The Picture of Dorian Gray and stage triumphs like Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest. His work delights with paradox and wordplay while quietly questioning respectability, hypocrisy, and the value placed on appearances.
At the height of his fame in 1890s London, Wilde’s career was shattered by scandal and imprisonment, experiences that deepened and darkened his later writing, including De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He spent his final years in exile on the Continent, dying in Paris at forty-six. Today his prose and plays remain fresh for their audacity and charm, and for the way they turn conversation itself into a form of art.
Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for and always missed.
fromThe Picture of Dorian GraybyGood God, Dorian, what a lesson! What an awful lesson!… Pray, Dorian, pray… The prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also. I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.
fromThe Picture of Dorian GraybyIt was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession… Perhaps one should never put one’s worship into words.
fromThe Picture of Dorian GraybyI knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.
fromThe Picture of Dorian GraybyThere is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all… The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
fromThe Picture of Dorian GraybyWe are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us… The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself…
fromThe Picture of Dorian GraybyYou had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection. You had made me understand what love really is… Prince of life! I have grown sick of shadows… Even if I could do it, it would be profanation for me to play at being in love. You have made me see that.
fromThe Picture of Dorian GraybyWhen we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.
fromThe Picture of Dorian GraybyYou will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.
fromThe Picture of Dorian GraybyTo cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul!
fromThe Picture of Dorian Grayby