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No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.
Oscar Wilde
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Beauty is subjective and can change based on context.

This quote by Oscar Wilde suggests that what we perceive as beautiful can change depending on the circumstances surrounding it. No matter how beautiful an object may appear, different conditions or perspectives can alter our perception, potentially revealing its less attractive qualities.

Themes

BeautySubjectivityPerceptionContextPhilosophy

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about art, one might quote Wilde to emphasize that beauty is not absolute.

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Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
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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.
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Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
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A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
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His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
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Quote by Oscar Wilde | QuoteProject