“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”
(Illusion, dream, and idealism are generally very internally satisfying, compared with mundane forms of reality.)
“An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.”
(Pleasure is pretty basic and necessary as one ages.)
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
(Absolutely. Most folks choose not to see or imagine the stars.)
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
“I can resist anything except temptation.”
(Wilde’s downfall, unfortunately.)
“Be yourself; everybody else is already taken.”
(Why copy someone else, wear their clothes, act and talk like them?)
“Experience is merely the name men give to their mistakes.”
(Lots of mistakes =lots of experience.)
“Irony is wasted on the stupid.”
(Shakespeare’s “Caviare to the general”.)
“Create yourself. Be yourself, your poem.”
(The ultimate creative act in life. How I have lived my life.)
“Never love anybody who treats you like you’re ordinary.”
(Why would you bother with someone like that?)
“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
(Limited minds=self-imposed limitations and limited lives. ‘We do it to ourselves’. Often.)
“I put my talent into my works; I put my genius into my life.”
(Why choose any differently?)
“Perhaps one never seems so much at one’s ease as when one has to play a part.”
(Roles tend to be familiar, comfortable. Even Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern would agree. Some parts are better than others, too.)
“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”
(as in Hamlet–”O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right”. There are also many weak, poor performers and performances.)
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
(Float, sleepwalk, like Meursault in Camus’s L’Etranger. Hence the expression ‘the art of living’.)
“I wrote when I did not know life; now that I do know the meaning of life, I have no need to write. Life cannot be written, life can only be lived.” (Why write when one knows how to live and especially when time is getting short? Plus, Life is the greatest art.)
“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”
(typical soft news item these daze: Lady Gaga stops wearing machine-gun bra on tour.)
“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” (can be–c.f. the art of Richard Stine)
(previously published here January 16, 2013; modified)