OSCAR WILDE

Oscar Wilde, poet, playwright, gay icon and deathbed convert to Catholicism, has been paid a rare tribute by the Vatican. His aphorisms are quoted in a collection of maxims and witticisms for Christians that has been published by one of the Pope’s closest aides.


Father Sapienza said that he had devoted the lion’s share of Provocations: Aphorisms for an Anti-conformist Christianity to Wilde because he was a “writer who lived perilously and somewhat scandalously but who has left us some razor-sharp maxims with a moral”. The book also includes contributions from the Colombian philosopher Nicolás Gómez Dávila.

Father Sapienza said that Wilde had been a great writer of powerful force and dazzling intelligence who was now chiefly remembered not for his promiscuity but for plays such as The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband as well as moral tales such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which a vain young man pays a terrible price for selling his soul to gain eternal youth.

Father Sapienza said that he wanted to “stimulate a reawakening in certain Catholic circles”. Christianity was intended to be a radical cure, not a humdrum remedy for the common cold: “Our role is to be a thorn in the flesh, to move people’s consciences and to tackle what today is the No 1 enemy of religion — indifference.”

The wit and wisdom of Wilde

Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither

I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage

One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead.

I see an intimate connection between the life of Christ and the life of the artist. Christ’s place indeed is with the poets

I can resist everything except temptation

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

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them

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

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes

What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to use