Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Fiction reflects the nature of life, where good outcomes bring happiness and bad outcomes bring sorrow.
This quote by Oscar Wilde highlights the inherent structure of storytelling in fiction, where narratives typically resolve in a way that aligns with moral expectations. It suggests that fiction serves a purpose in illustrating the contrasts of good and bad, ultimately reinforcing a sense of order and satisfaction in how stories conclude.
Themes
FictionHappinessStorytellingMoralityGoodBad
In practice
Example use cases
Use this quote to introduce a discussion on the role of fiction in literature classes.
More from Oscar Wilde
All quotes βLondon 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
I think it's important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.
Tracy ChapmanRead
I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog....Only in the novel are all things given full play.
D. H. LawrenceRead
A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
W. H. AudenRead
I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals.
David McculloughRead
Film is important; it can be more than reportage or a novel - it creates images people have never seen before, never imagined they'd see, maybe because they needed someone else to imagine them.
Steven Rodney McqueenRead
I'm singing what I want to sing based on the emotion of what that day feels like. That's what comes out of my mouth and guitar. That impacts people. They know anything can happen.
John MayerRead