Oscar Wilde is another one of my dead bestest friends whom I've never met. Do yourself a favor and get to know him if you don't. I read this biography a few summers ago, and even though it weighs 52 pounds, I couldn't put it down. Don't have time for book learnin'? Here's my quick synopsis of his life in three sentences: Oscar Wilde was a brilliant, talented, and funny Dublin-born man who was larger than life and ahead of his time. A-holes were intimidated by his genius so he was arrested for the crime of being gay and sentenced to two years hard labor in prison. He died three years after he got out, at the untimely age of 54, from an ear infection exacerbated in prison; thanks a lot, a-holes.
- A true friend stabs you in the front.
- Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
- Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
- She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
- Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
- The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
- The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
- There is no sin except stupidity.
- To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
- Only the shallow know themselves.
And finally, Oscar was hilarious even when he lay dying in a Paris hotel room:
"Either this wallpaper goes, or I do."
4 comments:
oh oscar, he is too much! what a good "give me good wallpaper or give me death" speech.
he's another of your dead bestest pals. he's another of my wrong crushes.
sigh.
Have you seen the film based on the book? It doesn't weigh as much to pick up and stars Stephen Fry and Jude Law.
Or when he was passing through customs in new york:
--Do you have anything to declare?
--I have nothing to declare but my genius!
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