“The Happy Prince”: ‘I like to fancy that there may be many meanings in the Tale - for in writing it [...] I did not start with the idea and clothe it in form, but began with a form and strove to make it beautiful enough to have many secrets and many answers.’ (Letter to Thomas Hutchinson, 7 May 1888; Hart-Davis, Letters, p.218; quoted in Angela Kingston, ‘Homeroticism and the Child in Wilde’s Fairy Tales’, in The Wildean, July 2001, p.44; cited in Terry Eagleton, ‘The Doubleness of Oscar Wilde’, in The Wildean, 19, July 2001, pp.2-9.) [Note that both authors contest the suggestion that there was any hint of paedophilia in Wilde’s sexuality.]

On his Irishness and Irishness in general
‘I am Irish by race, but the English have condemned me to speak the language of Shakespeare.’ (Letter to de Goncourt, in Letters, p.100; Selected Letters, p.197.)

‘It is the Celt who leads in art [...] there is no reason why in future years this strange Renaissance should not be almost as mighty in its way as that new birth of art that woke many centuries in the cities of Italy’ ( Artist as Critic , ed. Ellmann, London 1970, p. 396.)

'In a strange land [America] ’ the Irish have realised ‘what indomitable forces nationality possesses. What captivity has been to the Jews, exile is to the Irish. America and American influence have educated them. [...] There are some who will welcome with delight the idea of solving the Irish question by doing away with the Irish people. There are others who will remember that Ireland has extended her boundaries, and that we have now to reckon with her not merely in the Old World but also in the New. ’ (Review of J. A. Froude, Two Chiefs of Dunboye, in The Artist as Critic, rep. in The Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde , ed. Richard Ellmann, London: W.H. Allen 1973; quoted in Neil Sammells, ‘Oscar Wilde, Quite Another Thing’, in Paul Hyland & Sammells, eds., Irish Writing, Exile and Subversion, London: Macmillan 1991, pp.116-25; p.117.)

‘I do not know anything more wonderful, or more characteristic of the Celtic genius, than [the] quick artistic spirit in which we adapted ourselves to the English tongue. ’ (Selected Letters, p.100; quoted in Selina Mooney, UUC DMA Diss. 1999.)

“Since the English occupation, we have had no national art in Ireland at all. And there is not the slightest chance of our ever having it until we get that right of legislative independence so unjustly robbed from us, until we are really an Irish nation. ’ (cited in Harrry Browne, ‘Wildean Nationalism ’, review of Thomas Davis Wilde memorial lectures, RTE, Mon.; David Coakly.)

'Ireland is the Niobe among nations. The noblest materials for a great nation were there wrecked by the folly of England [...] Indeed the poetic genius of the Celtic race never flags or wearies. It is as sweet by the groves of California as by the groves of Ireland, as strong in foreign lands as in the land which gave it birth. And indeed I do not know anything more wonderful, or more characteristic of the Celtic genius, than the quick artistic spirit in which we adapted ourselves to the English tongue. The Saxon took our lands from us and left them desolate - we took their language and added new beauties to it.’ (Speech of 10 Feb. 1882, Chicago; Oscar Wilde Discovers America, NY 1936, p.168; quoted in Montgomery Hyde, Oscar Wilde, 1976, 68-69; all the foregoing cited by John Jordan in Richard Kearney, ed., The Irish Mind, 1985, p.213; see also Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 1995, p.35.)

Homosexuality [In response to Edward Carson’s questioning in court, 26 April 1896:] ‘The “Love that dare not speak its name” in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis for his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. In this century [it is] misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the “Love that dare not speak its name”, and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.’ (Q. source.)

Lord Alfred Douglas: Wilde wrote to “Bosie”: ‘Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry’, and spoke also of ‘rose-leaf lips made for the madness of kissing’.

Cf., ‘A patriot put in prison for his loving his country loves his country, and a poet in prison for loving boys loves boys.’ (Letter to Douglas, in Letters, p.705 [on leaving Reading Prison]).

Women (during pregnancy?): According to Robert Ross, Wilde remarked of his wife Constance: ‘[I cannot stand] the Romany smells of her body’. (Quoted by James Douglas [Radio Éireann preview of his Oscar Wilde series, May 1995]).

Worthy?: ‘Of course I have passed through a very terrible punishment and have suffered to the very pitch of anguish and despair. Still I am conscious that I was leading a life quite unworthy of an artist in every way and unworthy of the a son of my dear mother whose nobility whose nobility of soul and intellect you always appreciated, and who was herself always one of your warmest and most enthusiastic admirers.’ (Letter to Mrs. Stannard, 28 May 1897; written shortly after his liberation from gaol; sold at Sothebys for £10,000.)

Last words [remark to Robert Ross]: ‘My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go!’ (Martin F. Nolan, ‘We’re still Wilde about Oscar ’, in Boston Globe, 22 Nov. 2000.) [Commonly given as ‘either that wallpaper goes I do.’]