Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Examinations are meaningless; a true gentleman's knowledge is sufficient, while a non-gentleman's knowledge is harmful.
Oscar Wilde critiques the significance of examinations, suggesting they are superficial and unrepresentative of a person's true character or intelligence. He argues that a genuine gentleman possesses intrinsic knowledge, whereas someone lacking in character, no matter how much they know, only carries knowledge that may lead to negative outcomes.
Themes
ExaminationsKnowledgeGentlemanEducationCharacter
In practice
Example use cases
A teacher might use this quote to discuss the limitations of standardized testing in a classroom setting.
More from Oscar Wilde
All quotes →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.
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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.
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Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
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A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
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His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
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