Born in Dublin, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900) walked by moonlight and wrote with starlight. Wit and wonder in equal measure.

Poet, novelist, and playwright, he gifted the world the haunting morality tale The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and the sparkling comedy The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple,” said the Irish master of paradox, whose sunflower bravado and quicksilver charm lit every room he entered. Controversial and bold, Wilde believed in the saving grace of creative wit amid the chaos of living: “A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”

He insisted that life imitates art more than art imitates life — a conviction tested when triumph and fame were followed by imprisonment in 1895. “The two great turning points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison,” he confessed, finding in suffering a strange, luminous grace.

In exile, Wilde still carried laughter in his pocket and compassion in his heart. He spent his last years in Paris, remembered by friend George Bernard Shaw for an “unconquerable gaiety of soul.” Even when the world closed its doors, he kept one open for beauty... for art, for love, for joy.

Through it all, Wilde remained a visionary who trusted the moonlight and looked toward dawn — reminding us that wit, when kind, is a form of mercy, and that to delight in beauty is to honor the divine spark within us all.