OSCAR WILDE - Quotes

Oscar Wilde: The Gothic Dandy of Wit and Shadow

Oscar Wilde, born in Dublin in 1854, emerged as a literary titan whose gothic sensibilities danced beneath his glittering wit, casting shadows across the Victorian era with works like The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), a chilling tale of vanity and moral decay that unveils the darkness within beauty’s facade. A master of paradox, Wilde’s quip—“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell”—reveals his fascination with the gothic themes of inner torment and societal hypocrisy, a duality that defined his life as much as his art, culminating in his tragic imprisonment for “gross indecency” in 1895, a fall as dramatic as any gothic hero’s demise. His plays, like Salome (1891), drip with decadent, biblical horror, while his personal style—velvet cloaks, green carnations, and an air of melancholic rebellion—embodied the gothic dandy, a figure both alluring and doomed. Wilde’s legacy, sealed by his death in exile in 1900, whispers of a man who lived as a spectre in his own story, his words a haunting mirror to the gothic soul.

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.”

“Many lack the originality to lack originality.”