A Quote by Joe Orton

The Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility. — © Joe Orton
The Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility.
For some peculiar reason, two films about Oscar Wilde were started at the same time, back in 1959 or 1960. I played Wilde in one, and Robert Morley was in the other. As it turned out, at that particular moment there was no market for any Oscar Wilde movie at all.
Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.
The key to making up Oscar Wilde quotes is to add '~ Oscar Wilde' at the end.
If you put on an Oscar Wilde [play], it will interest those who are interested in Oscar Wilde. But it won't interest anybody else, because they won't get that wit.
[Vincent Price] did Oscar Wilde on Broadway, and I think he probably did it because he was almost like an Oscar Wilde. He had that brilliant humor.
The only thing in the world worse than being Oscar Wilde is not being Oscar Wilde.
Oscar Wilde was suing the Marquis of Queensbury in 1895 for libel accusing Wilde of homosexuality Counsel: Have you ever adored a young man madly? Wilde: I have never given adoration to anyone except myself.
Of course, both [Oscar] Wilde & [Vladimir] Nabokov believe in many things, and these things emerge in their writing clearly - for Wilde, the folly of humankind and the (romantic) grandeur of the heroic, lone individual (not unlike Wilde himself); for Nabokov, the possibility of a kind of transcendence through a great, prevailing, superior sort of love (especially in Ada, the most self-congratulatory of novels.)
The State, of course, is absolutely indispensable to the preservation of law and order, and the promotion of peace and social cooperation. What is unnecessary and evil, what abridges the liberty and threatens the true welfare of the individual, is the State that has usurped excessive powers and grown beyond its legitimate function - the super-State, the socialist State, the redistributive State, in brief, the ironically misnamed 'Welfare State.'
Oscar Wilde always makes me smile - with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of Wilde's books in a bookshop makes me smile.
General welfare is a general condition - maybe sound currency is general welfare, maybe markets, maybe judicial system, maybe a national defense, but this is specific welfare. This justifies the whole welfare state - the military industrial complex, the welfare to foreigners, the welfare state that imprisons our people and impoverishes our people and gives us our recession.
When in doubt, I read Oscar Wilde.
I've always been fascinated by Oscar Wilde.
I am interested in the Oscar Wilde we don't know.
I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.
There is no such thing as a heterosexual male, only men who haven't met Oscar Wilde yet.
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