Oscar Wilde

God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too.
- Quoted in "In Victorian days and other papers" By Sir David Oswald Hunter-Blair, (New York: Longmans, 1939, p122).

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
- Quoted in "Oscar Wilde, an idler's impression" By Edgar Saltus, (Chicago Brothers of the Book, 1917, p20).

Hélas

To drift with every passion till my soul

Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play

Is it for this that I have given away

Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?

Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll

Scrawled over on some boyish holiday

With idle songs for pipe and virelay,

Which do but mar the secret of the whole.

Surely there was a time I might have trod

The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance

Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:

Is that time dead? Lo, with a little rod

I did but touch the honey of romance--

And must I lose a soul's inheritance?