New Delhi, April 21 -- Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet, dramatist and novelist whose enduring fame rests on The Picture of Dorian Gray and his sparkling comedies, especially Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest.

Britannica says that he became known at Oxford for his wit and devotion to the Aesthetic movement, later established himself in London's artistic circles and came to be regarded as the personification of wit and sophistication despite the imprisonment that shattered his public career in the 1890s.

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."- Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, Act III

In the play, Cecil Graham asks, "What is a cynic?" and Lord Darlington replies with the lin...