Oscar Wilde was described by George Bernard Shaw as "the greatest talker of his time - perhaps of all time", and the quotations included in this book lend credence to that claim. The author states that Wilde had an astounding ability to sum up human experience in spontaneous perfect sentences, and could rise to great heights of oratory, as in his eloquent speech in praise of "the love that dare not speak its name"' Wilde's aphorisms have found a place in the British vocabulary, and this collection, arranged in alphabetical order by subject, includes hundreds of quotations drawn from his plays and letters and from the memoirs of his contemporaries, a testament to his lasting wit and wisdom.