雖說這本書是anthology （選集），我覺得它也算是王爾德的小小簡介。這是因為書本分了不同章節，除了以王爾德的作品為題，亦按他人生不同階段作主題。書中不止有王爾德的作品和書信，亦有當時社會不同人對他的評論等。
讀完書，王爾德給我的印象是：臉氣有點蒼白、頭髮有點長、才高氣傲、唯美、能言善道、幽默、睿智。他注定是不平凡的，同時也不容於世。
書中引了許多王爾德有趣和發人深省的話（太多了，下面不能盡錄）：
One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything. （我可不同意這點。我不會刻意隱瞞自己的年齡，可我不是個愛八卦的女生喔。）
Punctuality is the thief of time. （準時的我很同意，時間都浪費到等待遲到的人身上了。）
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. （要好好記住。）
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
（這句和另一句有異曲同工之妙－－It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.）
What is the difference between literature and journalism? Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read. That is all. （太悲觀了吧？）
If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilised. （他可不止一次嘲笑英國人不會說話，英國人真的那麼不會說話嗎？）
The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. （真夠諷刺的。）
Loveless marriages are horrible. But there is one thing worse than a absolutely loveless marriage. A marriage in which there is love, but on one side only; faith, but on one side only; devotion, but on one side only and in which of the two hearts one is sure to be broken. （除了可憐，想不到說什麼。）
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. （不知道為什麼會想起張愛玲。）
A child can understand a punishment inflicted by an individual, such as a parent or guardian, and bear it with a certain amount of acquiescence. What it cannot understand is a punishment inflicted by society. It cannot realise what society is. （要好好對待孩子。）
I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age... The gods had give me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring; I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art; I altered the minds of men and the colour of things; there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder... I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as mere mode of fiction; I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me; I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram. （這自述足以概括他的一切。）
書中雖然引了許多王爾德的名言，可惜的是，沒有我很喜歡的那句－－
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
