QuoteProject
One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
Oscar Wilde
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Life should be experienced fully without being bogged down by trivial details.

In this quote, Oscar Wilde suggests that while one should engage with the rich and vibrant experiences life offers, it is important not to get caught up in the minutiae that can detract from the beauty of those experiences. Instead of focusing on the petty details, we should appreciate the overall essence and emotions life brings, as dwelling on specifics can lead to a shallow and less meaningful existence.

Themes

LifeExperienceDetailsBeautyPhilosophy

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about living fully, one could quote Wilde to emphasize the importance of experiencing life without being bogged down by minor issues.

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

Give a thing a name and it will somehow come to be.
George R. R. MartinRead
Defense is superior to opulence.
Adam SmithRead
Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.
Albert CamusRead
In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.
Anna Brownell JamesonRead
The act of thinking and interpreting is so central to Judaism that it makes more sense that we've become people like Woody Allen - thinkers and talkers and drafters of law.
Tony KushnerRead
Is there not in every human soul a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world and immortal in the next, which can be developed by goodness, kindled, lit up, and made to radiate, and which evil can never entirely extinguish.
Victor HugoRead

A little wisdom, now and then

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