QuoteProject
JACK Your duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNON My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.
Oscar Wilde
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote humorously highlights the tension between social responsibilities and personal pleasures.

In this exchange between Jack and Algernon from Oscar Wilde's play, the characters are discussing the concept of duty and pleasure. Jack feels obligated to adhere to the responsibilities of being a gentleman, while Algernon asserts that his sense of duty has never prevented him from enjoying his personal indulgences. This reflects a common struggle between societal expectations and individual desires, illustrating Wilde's wit and perspective on the absurdities of social conventions.

Themes

DutyPleasureGentlemanRelationshipsSociety

In practice

Example use cases

In a conversation about balancing work and personal life, one might quote Wilde to emphasize the importance of enjoyment.

More from Oscar Wilde

Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
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

Joint undertakings stand a better chance when they benefit both sides.
EuripidesRead
The women of Afghanistan have a voice, and it needs to be heard and not forgotten.
Gayle Tzemach LemmonRead
Sometimes I think of Paris not as a city but as a home.
Anais NinRead
It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.
Carl RogersRead
Marriage is about love, but it is not first and foremost about love. First and foremost, marriage is about continuity and transmission.
Meir SoloveichikRead
Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told anyone how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established.
Rudyard KiplingRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.