"The fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody."

Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man under Socialism (p. 1). Édition du Kindle.

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue.

Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man under Socialism (p. 2). Édition du Kindle.

One regret is that we should construct society on such a basis that man has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is lovely, fascinating, and delightful in him—in which he misses the true pleasure and joy of living.

Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man under Socialism (p. 4). Édition du Kindle.

One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man under Socialism (p. 5). Édition du Kindle.

Oscar Wilde is pleasant. I thought maybe I had just read him at an impressionable time in my life, but  I was right back then. He is so quotable. I want to highlight whole pages and post them all. I'm not sure if anyone else I can think of where every single sentence is so quotable. I'm glad Oscar Wilde is a socialist. He is the kind of guy that I could see being. He has a lot of common with Harold Bloom in how he imagines an artist and imagines a work of art. I'm beginning to believe that way as well. (But who knows). I am at the beginning still of a long journey. 

Byron's personality, for instance, was terribly wasted in its battle with the stupidity, and hypocrisy, and Philistinism of the English. Such battles do not always intensify strength

The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.

This has so much of Bloom's fingerprints on it. This essay is transforming me back to my dorm room in Boston. Like when anyone brings up Marcus Aurelius, I'm right back there. 

He pointed out that the material needs of Man were great and very permanent, but that the spiritual needs of Man were greater still, and that in one divine moment, and by selecting its own mode of expression, a personality might make itself perfect.

Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man under Socialism (p. 7). Édition du Kindle.

And so he who would lead a Christlike life is he who is perfectly and absolutely himself. He may be a great poet, or a great man of science; or a young student at a University, or one who watches sheep upon a moor; or a maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about God, like Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or a fisherman who throws his net into the sea. It does not matter what he is, as long as he realises the perfection of the soul that is within him.

All imitation in morals and in life is wrong.

As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for school-boys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted;

Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man under Socialism (p. 8). Édition du Kindle.

Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime. That indeed is the reason why our criminals are, as a class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological point of view. They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins.

Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman.

Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man under Socialism (pp. 9-10). Édition du Kindle.

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever.

Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man under Socialism (p. 13). Édition du Kindle.

For anarchist historian George Woodcock "Wilde's aim in "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" is to seek the society most favorable to the artist. [...] for Wilde art is the supreme end, containing within itself enlightenment and regeneration, to which all else in society must be subordinated. [...] Wilde represents the anarchist as aesthete." [8] Woodcock called the essay, "The most ambitious contribution to literary anarchism during the 1890s" and finds that it is influenced mainly by the thought of William Godwin.[8]

Notes

You know I love Oscar Wilde. He’s just so easy to like! 

boring book club

Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism