Very Witty, Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin on this day.  A poet, essayist, lecturer, editor, novelist and playwright, his greatest invention may have been himself.  A great wit--there was none greater in his time--he's still regularly quoted today. (He also gets lots of good lines misattributed to him.)

Many of his witticisms are so famous, I probably don't need to repeat them.  Nevertheless, here are some of my favorites.

As a young man, he moved to England.  As he was walking down Piccadilly someone said "There goes that bloody fool Oscar Wilde" to which he responded "It's extraordinary how soon one gets known in London."

As a student at Oxford, he was given a New Testament passage to translate. The examiner heard enough to know he'd passed the exam and asked him to stop. Wilde pleaded "Do let me go on, I want to see how it ends."

One of the earliest lines that gained him fame was his aesthetic declaration "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china."

In France (and in French) a lady, in a self-deprecating manner, said to him "Am I not the ugliest woman in Paris?" In a flattering tone, he answered "In the world, madam."

When going through customs in America, he was asked if had anything to declare. "Only my genius." (There is some doubt about this story, but I choose to believe it.)

He said of fellow playwright and Dubliner George Bernard Shaw "he hasn't an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him."

Then there's the favorite of many--discussing Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop, he noted "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."