The Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde: A Treasury of Quotations, Anecdotes, and Repartee

In The Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde, Ralph Keyes has captured the verbal flair that delighted Wilde's contemporaries. This definitive compilation includes materials not only from Wilde's better-known works but also his more obscure reviews, letters, and appearances in friends' memoirs. It incorporates anecdotes that illustrate Wilde's knack for repartee: When a journalist said that he never discussed subjects on which he didn't know the facts, Wilde observed, That must limit your conversation frightfully. At the heart of The Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde are Wilde's best sayings. Some are witty: Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. Others are caustic: Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty. Still more show genuine wisdom: Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success. Oscar Wilde is as popular with readers today as he was in his own era; The Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde shows why. His words in this book remain fresh, alive, and electric. They stride off the page to demand that we pay attention, not just because he was clever but because he was wise. For all of their verbal hijinks, Ralph Keyes writes in his introduction, many of Wilde's observations displayed real perception. Amid the glitter of his wit lay nuggets of insight. By winnowing Oscar Wilde's best work into one volume, Keyes has given us a primer of one of history's greatest personalities and most original thinkers.