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You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
Oscar Wilde
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote suggests that pleasure can be fleeting and that the longing for more adds to its value.

In this quote, Oscar Wilde expresses the idea that certain pleasures, such as smoking a cigarette, are both delightful and ultimately unsatisfying. This paradox creates a longing that enhances the experience of pleasure, indicating that the desire for more is an intrinsic part of enjoyment in life.

Themes

PleasureCigaretteLongingSatisfactionDesire

In practice

Example use cases

This quote is perfect for a discussion on the nature of pleasure in a philosophy class.

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Quote by Oscar Wilde | QuoteProject