Was Oscar Wilde a genius or what?

Question

"I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting."
"I prefer women with a past. They're always so damned amusing to talk to."

Hmmm... Someone enjoys misery. It seems a familiar pattern. Does any true great genius of the world seem to revel in misery, or what?

Answer 1

Hi.
I'm thinking that, if someone has thier own personal website, they must be pretty great! Have a look! http://www.cmgww.com/historic/wilde/index.php
However, I can say that I'm embarrassed to say that I never knew who he was!

Bye.

Answer 2

I do think he was a genius, but I prefer these quotes:

"Where there is no exaggeration there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding."

"We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities."

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

"Ultimately the bond of all companionship, wheather in marriage or in friendship, is conversation."

"True friends stab you in the front."

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

"To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love."

"To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die."

"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."

"The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all."

"Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity."

"America is the first country to have gone from barbarism to decadence without the usual intervening period of civilization."

"Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is."

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

And my personal favorites are:

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion."

"Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people."

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious."

Answer 3

Yes, I guess he was. His plays are still performed today. He is still part of our cultural present. He put words into our daily vocabulary ("bunberrying"). Yes, he is a genius.

One doesn't have to be miserable to be a genius. There are genius's who write a lot about personal suffering and seem depressed alot in their artistic work. Kafka and Woody Allen come to mind.

Answer 4

The reason humans have friends is, to enjoy their misery. Discussing this might be the Last Taboo.

Answer 5

yes he was a coksucking faggut genius and no mistake.
this post was just to demonstrate that you CAN say any profanity you like as long as you slightly miss-spell it!

touchwood says i deserve 10 pts

Answer 6

love being the cause of misery, or for complete madness

Answer 7

read german romanticists like shopenhauer, nietzsche and heidegger.. shopenhauer actually has an interesting theory about the mellancholly experienced by the genius.

Answer 8

yes