“... superstition about numbers. As soon as numbers come into play, we are all liable to fall into what Oscar Wilde called ‘careless habits of accuracy’. A number holds out the promise of definiteness, exactness and objectivity. But a number is a signifier like any other, a way of representing something. We appeal to numbers as a way of replacing ...”

“... well for himself on bread and fish, directing his reputation, mingling with the Celtic showmen Oscar Wilde and Dylan Thomas, with Dickens of the spittoons and Trollope of the politicians, with the missile makers in New Mexico and the clever German Jewish Left clustered unhappily around Hollywood, retailing the old world and its soft wisdom to the ...”

“... text’. The Parker and Taylor whom the Italian resents being in the company of were associates of Oscar Wilde, who had been sentenced for homosexual offences a year earlier.The irony here is that, though the Italian was entirely right in his scepticism, the case study became the generic basis for what we now call the ‘gay novel’, offering as it does ...”

“... connections rather than to change his mind. He became a mason there, joining the same lodge as Oscar Wilde. Although Oxford abounded with dons who represented Britain as a new Rome, Rhodes’s love of the classics creaked with autodidacticism: he carried around Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, black with underlining, and hired scholars to produce two ...”

“... with boys in the South Pacific; Bram Stoker, who visited Whitman in Camden; and, later on, Oscar Wilde who visited twice in 1882. Wilde remarked: ‘there is no one in this wide great world of America whom I love and honour so much.’ Whitman, if one may judge by his scattered discussions of these figures with ...”

“... on Spencer’s knowledge, there are none on his willingness to go beyond them. Everyone, as Oscar Wilde never said, should know something about love and history – except, of course, the historians of love. This is a relatively modest imputation of sentiments to Wilde, as Homosexuality: A History makes ...”

“... today’s Rosenkavalier needs a signature. Huge crowds at the Abbey for the unveiling of the Oscar Wilde window, both transepts full with people standing (some on chairs) to catch a glimpse of the speakers. The most notable is of course the 90-year-old Gielgud, black overcoat, velvet collar, a half-smile always on his lips as of someone prepared to ...”

“... competition, especially as frémir lends support to frissonner. As an admirer of Huysmans, Oscar Wilde had recourse to the ‘shudder’ in The Picture of Dorian Gray. A high proportion of these instances occur in commonplace expressions such as ‘I shudder at the thought’ or ‘a shudder passed through’ whoever it was, examples which tend ...”

“... delight’, there is a voice in the wings whispering something not unlike what Auden said of Oscar Wilde – ‘Alone, he does not know who he is.’ The unanchored ‘you’ that often appears is Auden talking partly to himself and partly to another, a lover, a reader, an antagonist, uncertain about how close these shady characters can or should be ...”

“... she was still with Willy. ‘A genre she has made her own.’ ‘The Tendrils of the Vine’ is an Oscar Wilde-ish just-so story about how the nightingale found its voice: to save itself from death by suffocation from the plants that would grow all over it if it were ever to stop. The prose itself is ‘hooked’, as Kristeva puts it, sprouting out all ...”

“... to a double sense in which some things can be taken.’ ‘Notes on “Camp”’ was dedicated to Oscar Wilde and quotations from him were interspersed throughout the text. Her final entry on a list of camp items was ‘stag movies seen without lust’. Who watches stag movies without lust? Gay men. (Women don’t really exist in the essay.) ‘Who is ...”

“... a Victorian novel in its clinical detail and its poignant sentimentality. I can imagine having the Oscar Wilde response – ‘one must have a heart of stone’ to read it and not laugh – but I went for it. The room, saturated with love, mirrored the many holidays and weekends we had all spent together over the years. I stroked Paul’s ...”

“... be congested with allusions. Take ‘The Fictions of America’: Jacques Vaché, André Breton, Oscar Wilde, Melville, Whitman, Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson, Dickinson, Benjamin Franklin, the King James Bible, Shakespeare and Erasmus, all within the first three paragraphs. Some appreciate Hardwick’s tacit assumption of her readers’ sophistication; the ...”

“... than the proprietary solidity of permanent ownership. This is why strolling dandies like Oscar Wilde or Baudelaire seem to me intrinsically more interesting than extollers of settled virtue like Wordsworth or Carlyle. For the past five years I have been writing two columns a month for the Arabic press; and despite my extremely anti-religious ...”

“... through initial ignorance about the demand public action makes on one’s time. Hirschman quotes Oscar Wilde to the effect that socialism couldn’t work, because it would take too many evenings, and Rousseau to the effect that men must devote themselves either wholly to the state or wholly to their private pursuits. Moreover, the problems of dirty ...”