Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Long engagements can lead to unnecessary scrutiny of a partner's character before marriage.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde expresses his belief that long engagements can complicate the relationship by allowing partners too much time to analyze and assess each other's character. He argues that this scrutiny can be detrimental, suggesting that the uncertainty and potential disappointments arising during a prolonged engagement might undermine the romance and spontaneity that can accompany marriage.
Themes
EngagementMarriageCharacterRelationshipsLove
In practice
Example use cases
A couple discussing their views on engagement length during a wedding planning conversation.
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.
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His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
Oscar WildeRead
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He loves me, he doesn't love my bowels, if they showed him my appendix in a glass he wouldn't recognize it, he's always feeling me, but if they put the glass in his hands he wouldn't touch it, he wouldn't think, "that's hers," you ought to love all of somebody, the esophagus, the liver, the intestines. Maybe we don't love them because we aren't used to them, but if we saw them the way we saw our hands and arms maybe we'd love them; the starfish must love each other better than we do.
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Never underestimate the meanness in people's souls... Even when they're being kind... especially when they're being kind.
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I grew up writing thank-you notes. Real, honest-to-goodness, pen-and-ink, stamped and posted letters. More than simple habit, it's about what the commitment to expressing your thoughts and feelings in writing says about the character of the writer. About the joy such notes bring to the reader.
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Sometimes two people will regard each other over a gulf too wide to ever be bridged, and know immediately what could have happened, and that it never will.
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