Persian saddlebags and lighted a perfumed cigarette from his jeweled case, he must be allowed to begin the pleasures of the day by tearing up his tradesman's bills, pointing a half-dozen epigrams at the bourgeoisie, making a few assignations, and ruminating on some new and strange and "fiery-colored" sin.
The hero of the smart set, as Wilde conceives him, must be allowed to turn over all responsibility for truth and goodness to the middle class. What is the use of being a hero unless one can be relieved from "the sordid necessity of living for others"? "Unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone." "Industry is the refuge of those who have nothing to do." "Vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people." "Life is too important to be taken seriously." "There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about." "The world is perfectly packed with good women. To know them is a middle-class education." "Sin is the only real color-element left in modern life." "One could never pay too high a price for any sensation." "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." "Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us." "Nothing can cure the soul but the senses."
There is just enough of sharp and piercing truth in these epigrams to carry their maddening poison into the veins of foolish and humorless young men. If one can take the point without the poison, they are worth collecting.
It is absurd to pretend that Wilde's heroes are right-thinking young men. These gilded youths are adored by adolescents, as Byron was adored, for the brilliance and daring of their wickedness. As for
