Wilde's ability to articulate concise thoughts, not of course to embellish his works, but to dynamite an entire era, has no equal in world literature. (And a brief digression here: Biographies sift through the soil searching for the pieces that will reassemble a mosaic. So let's say that the book at hand attempts to do the same: it picks out the most beautiful, the funniest, crucial, thrilling, bitter, and ingenious aphorisms of Wilde, and from these fragments, scattered on the floor, you can see, because they managed to capture it, a man who passed by, who looked in the mirror and disappeared.)

trans: Dimitris Karakitsos