“..but more often he would be alone, feeling through a quick instinct, which was almost a divination, that the secrets of art are best learned in secret, and that Beauty, like Wisdom, loves the lonely worshiper.”
~Oscar Wilde
“The Young King”
I read Oscar Wilde on calm Sunday afternoons and never fail to fall in love. Wilde’s fairy tales are the tales of a man well acquainted with dark and light; a man haunted by God and beauty, nurtured by pain, and lost amid the wild distractions of the world. They are stories can’t be read without tears - there is too much of life there. Wilde wrote them for his own children and it’s lovely to see him point them again and again toward the whole-hearted love of the saint.
“As for thy dreams, think no more of them. The burden of this world is too great
for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrows to heavy for one heart to suffer.”
“Sayest thou that in this house?” Said the young king, and he strode past the Bishop,
And climbed up the steps of the altar, and stood before the image of Christ.
~Oscar Wilde
“The Young King”
The magic of Wilde is that of one who can not turn away from the pain he finds. Each tale teaches love in a different way, but all though the eyes, heart, and mystical imagination of the author, who, like the priest in the final tale, has finally lost his demons and come to welcome the whole of the world into his heart.
“The fauns also he blessed, and the little things that dance in the woodland, and the bright-eyed things that peer through the leaves. All the things on God’s world he blessed, an the people were filled with joy and wonder.”
~Oscar Wilde
“The Fisherman and His Soul”
I love his fairy tales; all of his writing, really, but I have a special affinity for fairy tales, if you haven't noticed. c; And reading of them frequently results in a profusion of tears!
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