catching up on another of those classics that I missed out on somewhere along the way. Made me want to know more about Oscar's life after prison. Did he write anything worth remembering once he 'found humility'?

PLenty of Wilde to choose from in this handy volume - Dorian Grey, Importance of Being Earnest, Reading Gaol, etc.

Used this as a convenient way to read some Wilde I had missed out on. So the parts I read were:

The Picture of Dorian Gray
De Profundis
Ballad of Reading Gaol
and the letters from Wilde included in this volume (only about half a dozen)

“No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their
peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.”

The amount of quotes I have highlighted within 741 pages is by no means enough. If I could highlight everything, I would.

I cannot tell you how many times I have read, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” for it is in my opinion one of the best stories ever told. And my Mother described his writing as “literary crème brûlée!” You will find no part of me in disagreement.

Yet, what struck me most was in “De Profundis” the end of his non-fictional letter to someone who betrayed him. To which it emotionally destroyed me in the best possible way. Sitting in public with my eyes closed just to feel it all. “I am, yet from me you may have still much to gain.
You came to me to learn the Pleasure of Life and the Pleasure of Art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sor-row, and its beauty.” For how often we look at what others teach us instead of what we teach us.

this is a great colletion of oscar wilde works.

God I am so glad to be done with this. Should have been a short story.

Most of this stuff was pretty silly, meager structures to hang witticisms on. The two exceptions were Salome, a very strange sort of dream, and De Profundis, a pained work of genius. Wilde's opus on the suffering of love, a force he can recognize, criticize, epigrammatize, yet cannot control, has to be the greatest thing he ever wrote.

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”

The Picture of Dorian Gray

well this was absolutely transcending thank you very much (especially de profundis)
i couldn't get through the 20 or so pages about Jesus or the end of the critic as artists even though im sure it was dead interesting, but i will at some point. the letters were great too.

I managed to get through about a third of "The Critic as Artist," the two plays, Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest, his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, about one-fifth of "De Profundis" which is the amazingly (amazingly) long letter to his ex-boyfriend, and some of his poems. What an interesting character he was! Modesty was not one of his traits, and his discussions of "Art" made me role my eyes, but I really enjoyed his works of fiction, and was left feeling bad for the poor guy despite his whining

Enjoyed every page, poem, essay and excerpt, letter, phrase, philosophy, and play (despite the punny corniness and contrived coincidences of The Importance of Being Earnest), and novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray).