The San Francisco Examiner - Thursday, May 2, 1895

WILDE'S MANY IDIOCIES.

In a review of the literary work of Oscar Wilde, good and bad, a staff contributor to the New York World says that it is admitted that the fallen apostle of estheticism has written much that is intrinsically fine, and has displayed a versatility that is astonishing. He has turned from an apostrophe to the sunflower to write an essay upon the "Soul of Man Under Socialism" that is a distinct addition to the literature of the subject. He is written plays with a literary flavor and a brilliancy of wit that made Sheridan almost dull, and he has penned a book of gorgeous fairy tales for children, revealing a fancy as delicate as it is brilliant. His plays, fugitive art criticism and his essays are of a high order of merit, but it is as an epigrammatist that Wilde has of late years best been known. Latterly, when he launched out as a lecturer on estheticism, he continued to say a great many clever paradoxical things which persisted in sticking to the memory. But many of his epigrams subjected to analysis become absolutely silly. It was Wilde who defined women as "Sphinxes without secrets," and it was he, too, who said: "Those who are faithful know only the pleasures of life; it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies."

In "Dorian Gray" he made the remark, which afterwards he repeated in "A Woman of No Importance": "Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious, and both are disappointed." Likewise, "The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer."

Here are some others:

"There are only five women in London who are worth talking to, and two of these can’t be admitted into decent society."

"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing it is always from the noblest of motives."

"There are only two ways of becoming civilized. One is being cultured, the other by being corrupt."

"The only way a woman can reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life."

"Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner."

"The one charm of the past is that it is past."

"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it."

"There is always something ridiculous about the passions of people whom one has ceased to love."

"American women are wonderfully clever in concealing their parents."

"One should never take sides in anything. Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore."

"Our East End is a very important problem. It is the problem of slavery, and we are trying to solve it by amusing the slaves."

"Curious thing, plain women are always jealous of their husbands; beautiful women never are. Beautiful women never have time; they are always so occupied in being jealous of other people’s husbands."

"Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman, or the want of it in a man."

"One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything."

"A man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world."

In "The Importance of Being in Earnest," the following occur:

"Divorces are made in heaven."

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

"In married life three is company and two is none."

"Women only call each other sister when they have called each other lots of other things first."

"I am always bored in the country; yes, they call it agricultural depression."

"No married man is ever attractive to his wife."

"The amount of women who flirt with their husbands in London is simply scandalous. It is washing one’s clean linen in public."

Wilde was at times a socialist in pose. In treating of the abolition of poverty he said:

"The emotions of men are stirred more quickly than man's intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with the suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease; they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty, for example, by keeping the poor alive, or, in the cause of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution; it is an aggravation of the difficulty.

"The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible."

Just what Wilde thinks of the value of the opinion of his fellow-men is of interest just now. Here it is:

"The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way."

In his essay on "The Decay of Lying," which has puzzled so many and delighted more, there is this about America and its patron saint:

"In Carlyle’s ‘French Revolution,' one of the most fascinating historical novels ever written, facts are either kept in their proper subordinate positions or else entirely excluded on their general ground of dullness. Now everything is changed. Facts are not merely finding a footing in history, but they are usurping the Domain of Fancy, and have invaded the Kingdom of Romance. Their chilling touch is over everything. They are vulgarizing mankind. The crude commercial sin of America, its materializing spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high, unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature."