Here’s a baker’s dozen:

o A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

o A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

o A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

o A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.

o All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

o All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

o Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.

o Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

o Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

o At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.

o Charity creates a multitude of sins.

o Children have a natural antipathy to books – handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.

o Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

* * *

Oscar Fingall O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford where, a disciple of Pater, he founded an aesthetic cult. In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, and his two sons were born in 1885 and 1886. His novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and social comedies Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance< /strong> (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), established his reputation. In 1895, following his libel action against the Marquess of Queesberry, Wilde was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for homosexual conduct, as a result of which he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), and his confessional letter De Profundis (1905). On his release from prison in 1897 he lived in obscurity in Europe, and died in Paris in 1900.