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Amusing, thought-provoking epigrams, aphorisms, and other jests from the plays, essays, and lively conversation of Oscar Wilde offer a feast of humorous and profound quips. Nearly 400 quotes.
"I have put my genius into my life," declared Oscar Wilde, adding, "I have put only my talent into my works." This gift edition of the renowned poet and playwright's aphorisms draws upon both realms. Hundreds of sparkling jests and epigrams include quips from Wilde's personal letters and conversations as well as his fiction, essays, lectures, and plays. The most comprehensive collection of Wilde's witticisms, it will delight both longtime fans and new readers.
Oscar Wilde is one of the most quoted and quotable men in history. He once boasted that he could talk spontaneously on any subject, a claim effortlessly borne out by the range and scope of the examples collected in this book. It is an entertaining, instructive, and revealing look at a man who is unlikely ever to be forgotten. "Oscar Wilde," wrote Richard Ellmann, "we have only to hear the great name to anticipate that what will be quoted as his will surprise and delight us. His wit is an agent of renewal, as pertinent now as a hundred years ago."
“One should either wear a work of art, or be a work of art,” Oscar Wilde once declared. In The Invention of Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel explores Wilde’s self-creation as a “work of art” and a carefully constructed cultural icon. Frankel takes readers on a journey through Wilde’s inventive, provocative life, from his Irish origins—and their public erasure—through his challenges to traditional concepts of masculinity and male sexuality, his marriage and his affairs with young men, including his great love Lord Alfred Douglas, to his criminal conviction and final years of exile in France. Along the way, Frankel takes a deep look at Wilde’s writings, paradoxical wit, and intellectual convictions.
As the first collection of essays about Oscar Wilde's comedies, the contributors re-evaluate Oscar Wilde's society plays as 'comedies of manners" to see whether this is actually an apt way to read Wilde's most emblematic plays. Focusing on both the context and the texts, the collection locates Wilde both in his social and literary contexts.
More than 1,000 ripostes, paradoxes, wisecracks: "Work is the curse of the drinking classes," "I can resist everything except temptation," etc.
Complete texts of "The Happy Prince and Other Tales," "A House of Pomegranates," "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories," "Poems in Prose," and "The Portrait of Mr. W. H."
'It would be unfair to expect other people to be as remarkable as oneself' Wilde's celebrated witticisms on the dangers of sincerity, duplicitous biographers, the stupidity of the English - and his own genius. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.
Got wit? We’ve all been in that situation where we need to say something clever, but innocuous; smart enough to show some intelligence, without showing off; something funny, but not a joke. What we need in that moment is wit—that sparkling combination of charm, humor, confidence, and most of all, the right words at the right time. Elements of Wit is an engaging book that brings together the greatest wits of our time, and previous ones from Oscar Wilde to Nora Ephron, Winston Churchill to Christopher Hitchens, Mae West to Louis CK, and many in between. With chapters covering the essential ingredients of wit, this primer sheds light on how anyone—introverts, extroverts, wallflowers, and bon vivants—can find the right zinger, quip, parry, or retort…or at least be a little bit more interesting.
