“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Born in Dublin to intellectual parents, Wilde was a leading light of the Aesthetics Movement, which included Whistler, Pater, Swinburne and Waugh among others, and celebrated beauty for its own sake rather than the social uplift it might provide as championed by Ruskin et alia. Better known for his incomparable satiric plays such as The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde’s sole novel was the darkly Faustian The Picture of Dorian Gray. Although very successful as an essayist and lecturer, he died penniless in France after being jailed and then hounded from England for his sexual preferences. His last words, perhaps apocryphal, as he lay on his death bed surrounded by creditors: “Well gentlemen, I seem to be dying beyond my means.”
Good Morning Gloucester 
And then there is the legend that when he was dying in a crummy hotel room in Paris, he said,”either the wall paper goes or I go.”
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