Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Oscar Wilde critiques the dreariness of 19th-century fashion and implies that sin brings vibrancy to life.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde expresses his disdain for the dullness and gloominess of 19th-century attire, suggesting that societal norms have stripped life of its colors and vibrancy. He provocatively claims that the only real 'color' in modern life comes from sin, implying that moral transgressions add a certain richness and complexity that is otherwise missing in a conformist society.
Themes
CostumeNineteenth CenturySinColorModern Life
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about fashion history, one might quote Wilde to illustrate the cultural shifts in aesthetics.
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.
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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.
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
When common objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us.
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Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.
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Objectivity is impossible and it is also undesirable. That is, if it were possible it would be undesirable, because if you have any kind of a social aim, if you think history should serve society in some way; should serve the progress of the human race; should serve justice in some way, then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think will advance causes of humanity.
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I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It always made me want to do just the opposite.
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I died from a mineral and plant became, Died from the plant, took a sentient frame; Died from the beast, donned a human dress - When by my dying did I ever grow less.
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When I reached adulthood, even now, I could afford to belong to a country club. But I could never belong to a private club because of my experience as a child, because it would isolate me from the whole of humanity.
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