‘The interesting thing about him is that he is a dandy as well as a philosopher. He is naturally insignificant in looks, but by dint of elaborate training in gesture has turned himself into quite a striking looking person.’

[On being asked if Wilde was a snob:] ‘No, I would not say that. England is a strange country to the Irish. To Wilde the aristocrats of England were like the nobles of Baghdad.’ (Quoted in Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, pp.53-56.)

'Here we touch on the pulse of Wilde’s art - sin. He deceived himself into thinking that he was the bearer of good news of neo-paganism to an enslaved people. His own distinctive qualities, the qualities, perhaps, of his race - keenness, generosity, and a sexless intellect - he placed at the service of a theory of beauty which, according to him, was to bring back the golden age and the joy of the world’s youth. But is some truth adheres to his subjective interpretations of Aristotle, to his restless thought that proceeds by sophisms rather than syllogisms, to his assimilations of nature as foreign to his [proud nature] as the delinquent is to the humble, at its very base is the truth inherent in the soul of Catholicism: that man cannot reach the divine heart except through that sense of separation and loss called sin.’ (Ellmann, Oscar Wilde: A Collection of Essays, NY: Prentice Hall, 1969, p.60.)