IRONIES AND PARADOXES

Much of Wild's impact comes from his ability to turn a common saying on its head. His capacity to come up consistently with the unexpected leads his audience at first to laughter and then often to thought. Frequently, there is a message in the jokes, and one should not be taken in by their outward lightness or profusion. Wilde's witticisms are not always consistent with each other. Many of his saying come in fact from the mouths of his characters. Thus we have the extreme cynicism of Lord Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray or of Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, both dubious characters. And even the essay "The Decay of Lying" takes the form of a dialogue between two fictional characters, which allows the author to take a more rarefied position than his own might have been.

Divorces are made in Heaven ... (The Importance Of Being Earnest )

I can resist everything except temptation.(Lady Wmdermere's Fan)

The English country gentleman galloping after a fox" - me unspeakable in mil pursuit of the inedible. (A Woman of No Importance)

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for tneir good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies! (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect. ( The Picture of Dorian Gray )

. . . remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.( Letters)

... if a man knows the law there is nothing illegal he cannot do when he likes: that is why folk become lawyers. That is about all they are good tor. ( Vera, or the Nihilists)

. . . there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. (The Picture of Dorian Gray )

I dislike arguments of any Kind. They are always vulgar, ana often convincing. (The Importance of Being Earnest)

I think that life is far too important a thing to talk seriously ahout it. (Lady Wmaermere's Fan)

I love acting. It is so much more real than life. (Tne Picture of Dorian Gray)

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

The fact is that the puhlic have an insatiatle curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. ( Tne Soul of Man under Socialism)

When one is in love, one always begins hy deceiving one s self, and one always ends hy deceiving others. ( The Picture of Dorian Gray )