Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses a preference for the company of those who understand both beauty and sorrow.
Oscar Wilde emphasizes that he values relationships with artists and individuals who have experienced suffering, as they possess a deeper understanding of life's complexities. The appreciation for beauty intertwined with sorrow reflects a profound emotional depth that Wilde finds lacking in those who have not faced such experiences, making them uninteresting to him.
Themes
BeautySorrowArtRelationshipsEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of creativity, one might say, 'As Oscar Wilde noted, the only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered.'
More from Oscar Wilde
All quotes →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.
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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.
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Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
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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
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