Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. American novels, answered Lord Henry.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the perception and value of American literature through a sarcastic lens.
In this exchange between the Duchess and Lord Henry, Oscar Wilde cleverly compares American novels to dry-goods, suggesting that they are considered commonplace or lacking in depth. This indicates a critique of American literature's perceived quality and artistic merit in contrast to other literary traditions, showcasing Wilde's wit and his views on cultural production.
Themes
LiteratureAmerican NovelsOscar WildeArtCritique
In practice
Example use cases
In a literature class discussing American novels, this quote can illustrate differing opinions on their artistic value.
More from Oscar Wilde
All quotes βLondon 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
Writing! The activity for which the only adequate bribe is the possibility of suicide, one day.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
Those are miracles that no merely human brain can work. The artist is merely the sound conduct of a Force that dictates to him what he should do.
Johannes BrahmsRead
Because beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It's the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death.
Muriel BarberyRead
I don't really trust ideas - especially good ones... Rather, I put my trust in the materials that confront me, because they put me in touch with the unknown.
Robert RauschenbergRead
In my opinion, trying to guess what readers want is the wrong approach. You have to tell your story as best you can and as true to yourself as possible. You have to be honest and fair and vulnerable and foolish and brave, and not care what anyone thinks of it.
Jeannette WallsRead
Music endures and ages far better than books. Books, made of words, are unavoidably attached to ideas, events, conflict, and history, but music has the power to transcend time. At least for a time. Palestrina sounds as fresh today as he did in 1555, but Dante, only three centuries older, already smells of the archaic, the medieval, the catacombs.
Edward AbbeyRead