Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the differences in entertainment and social dynamics between urban and rural settings.
Oscar Wilde's quote highlights the contrasting experiences of being in a town versus the countryside. It suggests that while urban life tends to focus on self-amusement, rural life often involves engaging with and entertaining others, leading to a sense of boredom in the latter. Wilde uses this observation to comment on the societal expectations and feelings of isolation that can arise in different environments, emphasizing the complex nature of human interactions based on oneβs surroundings.
In practice
In a speech about urban life versus rural living.
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
The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit.
It's never a question of skin pigmentation. It's never a question of just culture or sexual orientation or civilization. It's what kind of human being you're going to choose to be from your mama's womb to the tomb and what kind of legacy will you leave.
It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful.
The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads. Laughter, praise, honors, money, and the love of beautiful girls will be your only reward.
Of the three official objects of our prison system: vengeance, deterrence, and reformation of the criminal, only one is achieved; and that is the one which is nakedly abominable.
I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being-that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
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