Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
You have always told me it was Ernest. I have introduced you to every one as Ernest. You answer to the name of Ernest. You look as if your name was Ernest. You are the most earnest-looking person I ever saw in my life. It is perfectly absurd your saying that your name isn't Ernest.
Interpretation
The quote humorously highlights the absurdity of identity and the importance placed on names.
In this quote by Oscar Wilde, the speaker humorously insists that the person being addressed must be named 'Ernest' because of how they present themselves and how others perceive them. It explores the idea that our identities can often be shaped by external perceptions and societal expectations, leading to a playful examination of truth and authenticity.
In practice
Sharing this quote during a discussion about identity and self-perception in a philosophy class.
Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
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.
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.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
I think a rotisserie is like a really morbid ferris wheel for chickens. It’s a strange piece of machinery . . . We will take the chicken, kill it, impale it, and then rotate it. And I’ll be damned if I’m not hungry! Because spinning chicken carcasses make my mouth water! I like dizzy chicken. With a side of potatoes of some sort.
In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.
Here I am paying big money to you writers and what for? All you do is change the words.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don't laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that's not real laughter.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.