I mentioned poetry...

... a few posts ago and recently found myself halfway through Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Two visits to Ireland – and Irish people, pubs, culture, humor, and hospitality – convinced me nothing bad or boring comes from there. The book is good. Rich like a decadent dessert. I will take M 'n' m wherever they want after their college graduation. By then it might be outer space. If it's Ireland, I have an idea what to see and do. I hope they choose Ireland, Scotland, London, Paris, Munich, Brussels, Amsterdam, Prague, Rome, Venice, Florence, Geneva, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Saint Petersburg, Budapest, Krakow and whatever else we can cram into a week or two. Unless they choose Asia. Or Africa. Or South America or Australia or even Antarctica which is just a jump from Argentina. We'll do it.

From The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

"Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor."

"It is personalities, not principles, that move the age."

"The only artists I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."

"It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man - that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above it's proper value."