Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was the most quotable writer of his age and knew it, building plays and conversation alike out of reversible epigrams. The Picture of Dorian Gray, his only novel, was attacked as immoral on publication and later quoted against him at the trial that sent him to Reading Gaol for two years’ hard labour; he died in Paris three years after his release. Attribution is the usual problem with Wilde: lines from the plays, the essays and the letters get filed under the novel, and remarks he never made get filed under his name. Each quote here names the work it is actually from.