Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
JACK Your duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNON My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote humorously highlights the tension between social responsibilities and personal pleasures.
In this exchange between Jack and Algernon from Oscar Wilde's play, the characters are discussing the concept of duty and pleasure. Jack feels obligated to adhere to the responsibilities of being a gentleman, while Algernon asserts that his sense of duty has never prevented him from enjoying his personal indulgences. This reflects a common struggle between societal expectations and individual desires, illustrating Wilde's wit and perspective on the absurdities of social conventions.
Themes
DutyPleasureGentlemanRelationshipsSociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a conversation about balancing work and personal life, one might quote Wilde to emphasize the importance of enjoyment.
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
Girls grow up scarred by caution and enter adulthood eager to shake free of their parents' worst nightmares. They still know to be wary of strangers. What they don't know is whether they have more to fear from their friends.
Nancy GibbsRead
Genuine sincerity opens people's hearts, while manipulation causes them to close.
Daisaku IkedaRead
A man is a better citizen of the United States for being also a loyal citizen of his state and of his city; for being loyal to his family and to his profession or trade; for being loyal to his college or his lodge.
Louis D. BrandeisRead
I have a respect for manners as such, they are a way of dealing with people you don't agree with or like.
Margaret MeadRead
No one's ever dared come out and say it before, but there's not a man among us that doesn't think it, that doesn't feel just as you do about her and the whole business - feel it somewhere down deep in his scared little soul.
Ken KeseyRead
I think we will have full marriage rights in Colorado. But in 1992, there was a very hateful Amendment 2 that basically made it legal for any institution to deny gays and lesbians access, whether it's hospitals or restaurants or employment. Anybody could fire you or not let you in a restaurant because you were gay.
Martina NavratilovaRead