Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well. Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta. Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the distinction between physical well-being and good behavior, suggesting they are often not aligned.
In this exchange between Lady Bracknell and Algernon, Oscar Wilde cleverly illustrates the nuance of human behavior, emphasizing that feeling well physically does not imply moral or social rectitude. The wit comes from the recognition that in society, people may often appear well externally while their behavior might be questionable. This reinforces Wilde's frequently satirical take on Victorian social norms.
In practice
In a speech on societal norms, one might use the quote to highlight the discrepancy between outward appearances and true behavior.
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
Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.
A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.
Nanny Ogg could see the future in the froth on a beer mug. It invariably showed that she was going to enjoy a refreshing drink which she almost certainly was not going to pay for.
I never turn on the crowd. Sometimes, you think it's a terrible show, and then afterward, sometimes people say they really liked it. So turning on the crowd is only going to alienate the few people who might like it. What do I do in that situation? Get through it.
The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.
I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, were it not for making living, which is rather a nouciance.
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