I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.

Oscar Wilde was a very well-known Irish poet and playwright who lived from 1854 to 1900

and had a brilliant, colorful, difficult life of glory and persecution.

He was a witty, gifted and flamboyant esoteric.

Among his many accomplishments, Wilde is particularly well-known today for his epigrams

and witty sayings.

That's one reason I love his work.

I love his epigrams, aphorisms and paradoxes.

For instance, he said, I can resist everything except temptation.

He makes many thought-provoking observations.

Here are some of my favorites.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the

soul.

A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at.

And here's my favorite.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others would

pick them up.

In his acclaimed biography of Oscar Wilde, Richard Elman recounts how as a student, Oscar

Wilde was very interested in furnishing his rooms at Oxford and he bought two large

faces of blue China to hold lilies.

Elman notes, these faces may have inspired the remark which reverberated first round

the university then round the country.

...