I do not believe that in all the realms of death there is a more fascinating or delightful companion.
One last word on Oscar Wilde's place in English literature.

In the course of this narrative I have indicated sufficiently, I think, the value and importance of his work; he will live with Congreve and with Sheridan as the wittiest and most humorous of all our playwrights.

"The Importance of Being Earnest" has its own place among the best of English comedies.

But Oscar Wilde has done better work than Congreve or Sheridan: he is a master not only of the smiles, but of the tears of men.

"The Ballad of Reading Gaol" is the best ballad in English; it is more, it is the noblest utterance that has yet reached us from a modern prison, the only high utterance indeed that has ever come from that underworld of man's hatred and man's inhumanity.