Genius

When Oscar Wilde visited United States the customs officer asked, “Anything to declare?”
The brilliant Irish wit answered, “I have nothing to declare except my genius.”

While I’m at it here are some more Oscar Wilde quotes (spelling correct that’s to say British – my notes in parenthesis):

• Of course America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
• We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language (note the point about spelling).
• The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is. Nothing should be able to harm a man but himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance. (He would have been executed in today’s America where the only thing that maters is what a person has….)
• The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything. (How true when I was twenty my father was always wrong – it’s interesting how much he learned in the next ten years…. old joke)
• Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance. (because men are so unsure of themselves)
• I can believe anything as long as it is incredible. (excess in all things especially in excess)
• Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
• No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
• The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world own shame.
• There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. (I don’t agree fully but so true, my lack of agreement is only that I’m so provincial)
• Who, being loved, is poor?
• I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. (from the importance of being Ernest)
• To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. (same play from which also comes: “I call a  spade a spade.” reply “I’m glad I don’t know what a spade is!”)
• A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
• Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. (so true)
• Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. (hence TV and Internet – get a life stop being on Internet – stop reading this)
• I know not whether Laws be right, Or whether Laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long.
• The reason we are so pleased to find other people’s secrets is that it distracts public attention from our own.
• All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
• I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself. 
• Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
• I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
• There is no sin except stupidity.
• One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
• Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
• In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
• To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. 
• We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. 
• Something was dead in each of us, And what was dead was Hope 
• The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. 
• Ah! Don’t say you agree with me. When people agree with me. I always feel that I must be wrong. (that’s the way I feel about popular things – I’m so glad I’ve never seen American Idol or other “reality shows)
  
• True friends stab you in the front. 
• Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success. (it’s sympathise, colour, aluminium, and football is played with the round ball!)
• Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience

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