Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.
Interpretation
Oscar Wilde critiques the dreariness of 19th-century fashion and implies that sin brings vibrancy to life.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde expresses his disdain for the dullness and gloominess of 19th-century attire, suggesting that societal norms have stripped life of its colors and vibrancy. He provocatively claims that the only real 'color' in modern life comes from sin, implying that moral transgressions add a certain richness and complexity that is otherwise missing in a conformist society.
In practice
In a lecture about fashion history, one might quote Wilde to illustrate the cultural shifts in aesthetics.
Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don't know.
When one has never heard a man's name in the course of one's life, it speaks volumes for him; he must be quite respectable.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, " This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in; fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well! It must have been made to have me in it!
In the 'era of colorblindness,' there's a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we, as a nation, have 'moved beyond' race.
I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe, that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction.
Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood.
Animals share with us the privilege of having a soul.
Things are such that someone lifting a cup, or watching the rain, petting a dog, or singing, just singing - could be doing as much for this universe as anyone.
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