Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Love! What is love? It's nothing. It's just a word. It doesn't exist. Only pleasure is important.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote questions the essence of love, suggesting it is merely a concept overshadowed by the pursuit of pleasure.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde provocatively challenges the conventional understanding of love, implying that it lacks substance and holds no real importance. He posits that love is merely a term without true existence, which is ultimately transcended by the experience of pleasure, thus suggesting that seeking enjoyment is the primary objective in life rather than being entangled in the complexities of love.
Themes
LovePleasureExistenceConceptOscar Wilde
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on the nature of human emotions, this quote can highlight the debate between love and pleasure.
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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Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch herβdoubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there.
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He had no plans, no definite intentions, except to kiss her lips again, to hold her in his arms.
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You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love you would not be happy or want to play.
Anne Sullivan MacyRead
Love's Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war.
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