The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Remarkable Rocket’, in The Happy Prince and Other Tales, London, 1888
With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’, Fortnightly Review, vol. 291 (February, 1891)
[W]e live in an age when only unnecessary things are absolutely necessary to us.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, London, 1891
Spirit of Beauty! tarry still awhile,
They are not dead, thine ancient votaries;
Some few there are to whom thy radiant smile
Is better than a thousand victories[.]
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Garden of Eros’, 1881
A new hedonism—that is what our century wants.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, London, 1890
I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other, I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.
Oscar Wilde, quoted in Sheridan Morley, Oscar Wilde, London, 1997, p. 31