Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that a love for the color green may indicate artistic inclinations in individuals, while in societies it might reflect moral decline.
Oscar Wilde's quote highlights the complexity of the color green as a symbol of both artistic sensibilities and potential moral ambiguity. In individuals, a fondness for green can suggest creativity and a unique perspective, yet for nations, it can imply a weakening of values, suggesting that aesthetics and ethics can be interlinked in paradoxical ways.
Themes
GreenArtisticMoralsIndividualsNations
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on artistic influences in literature, one might quote Wilde to illustrate the connection between color preferences and creativity.
More from Oscar Wilde
All quotes →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.
Oscar WildeRead
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.
Oscar WildeRead
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
Oscar WildeRead
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
Oscar WildeRead
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
Oscar WildeRead
Similar quotes
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
Ezra PoundRead
There she weaves by night and day, A magic web with colors gay. She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay, To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be, And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott.
Alfred Lord TennysonRead
On of the reasons that I wanted to study literature was because it exposed everything. Writers looked for secrets that had never been mined. Every writer has to invent their own magical language, in order to describe the indescribable. They might seem to be writing in French, English, or Spanish, but really they were writing in the language of butterflies, crows, and hanged men.
Heather O'NeillRead
I always had a dream about trying to make a movie that had no dialogue in it, that was just music and pictures. I still haven't done it yet, but I tried to get close in the beginning.
Paul Thomas AndersonRead
I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how to become a professional writer. I say to you, "If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.
Kurt VonnegutRead
Paris is a place where, for me, just walking down a street that I've never been down before is like going to a movie or something. Just wandering the city is entertainment.
Wes AndersonRead