Irish writer, Oscar Wilde’s only novel Picture of Dorian Gray fell into my hands, as an impressionable teenager, and made me want to write witty-wise aphorisms, too!
Thank you, Oscar, for your sparkling bon mots — I wouldn’t be referred to as one of the foremost contemporary writers of aphorisms without your brilliant example.
Below, as an homage, are a selection of his ever quotable sayings:
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Art:
- Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations for Oscar Wilde's Salome.
- Starry Night Over the Rhone by Van Gogh
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