"I have had the privilege of listening also to many other masters of table-talk—Meredith James, Augustine Birrell and Arthur Balfour, Gilbert Chesterton and Desmond MacCarthy and Hilaire Belloc—all of them splendid in their own way. But assuredly Oscar in his own way was the greatest of them all—the most spontaneous and yet the most polished, the most soothing and yet the most surprising. That his talk was mostly a monologue was not his own fault. His manners were very good; he was careful to give his guests or his fellow guests many a conversational opening; but seldom did anyone respond with more than a very few words. Nobody was willing to interrupt the music of so magnificent a virtuoso. To have heard him consoled me for not having heard Dr. Johnson or Edmund Burke, Lord Brougham or Sydney Smith."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Max Beerbohm, quoted in 'Sir Max Beerbohm's Tribute to Wilde', The Times (15 October 1954), p. 5
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Oscar Wilde
1854 – 1900
irischer Schriftsteller
578 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Oscar Wilde →
Related Quotes
"When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just as when he talks about the rich he simply means p…"
"There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about."
"Oma silm on kuningas. (EVS)"
"Il n'est si bonne compagnie qu'on ne quitte."
"Walk the talk. (Manser, 2007)"
"For a sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it."
"All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death;"
"He (Jack London) wrote an essay called "What Life Means to Me" which takes its place with Kropotkin's "Appeal to the …"
"If after I am free a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. I can be perf…"
"I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky."