Oscar Wilde (Irish author)
(October 16, 1854 - November 30, 1900)

In many of his works, exposure of a secret sin or indiscretion and consequent disgrace is a central design. If life imitated art, as Wilde insisted in his essay “The Decay of Lying” (1889), he was himself approximating the pattern in his reckless pursuit of pleasure. In addition, his close friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas, whom he had met in 1891, infuriated the marquess of Queensberry, Douglas’s father. Accused, finally, by the marquess of being a sodomite, Wilde, urged by Douglas, sued for criminal libel. Wilde’s case collapsed, however, when the evidence went against him, and he dropped the suit. Urged to flee to France by his friends, Wilde refused, unable to believe that his world was at an end. He was arrested and ordered to stand trial.

[Know More]

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
— The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Lady Windermere's Fan

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray

“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Some things are more precious because they don't last long.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
― De Profundis

David Lynch (American filmmaker)
(January 20, 1946 - )

His early ambition was to become a painter, and, after graduating from high school (1964) in Alexandria, Virginia, he enrolled at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He later (1965–69) studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. There he created his first film, a 60-second animation entitled Six Men Getting Sick (1967), for an experimental painting and sculpture contest. In 1970 Lynch became a student at the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film Studies (later the AFI Conservatory), where he began working on his first feature film, Eraserhead (1977).