Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
The English country-gentleman galloping after a fox — the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
Interpretation
Wilde critiques the absurdity of British fox hunting, highlighting the folly of pursuing something unattainable.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde cleverly uses humor to critique the activity of fox hunting, a pastime associated with the English aristocracy. By describing the 'unspeakable' chasing the 'uneatable,' he emphasizes the absurdity and futility of the chase, suggesting that people often pursue activities that are inherently pointless or nonsensical.
In practice
In a speech addressing the absurdities of modern life, one might use this quote to illustrate how society often chases unrealistic goals.
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
A lot of sexism is just very silly... and the best response is laughter and ridicule.
Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.
If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you open to my ideas
Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.
Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats; then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.
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