Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Wilde suggests that America's existence was not a discovery in the traditional sense, but rather an awareness of something already present.
This quote by Oscar Wilde posits the idea that the 'discovery' of America is less about a literal finding of land and more about the recognition and understanding of it by those who encountered it. It challenges the conventional narrative of discovery, encouraging a deeper reflection on the idea of existence and the perceptions we hold of places and cultures that we may not fully understand.
Themes
AmericaDiscoveryPerceptionRecognitionExistence
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on colonialism, this quote can illustrate how historical narratives can be reconsidered.
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.
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
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A man must know his destiny… if he does not recognize it, then he is lost. By this I mean, once, twice, or at the very most, three times, fate will reach out and tap a man on the shoulder… if he has the imagination, he will turn around and fate will point out to him what fork in the road he should take, if he has the guts, he will take it.
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Like looking through a telescope into the Milky Way and wondering if we're alone in the universe, it made me realize with the glaring clarity of desert light how scarce and delicate life is, how insignificant we are compared with the forces of nature and the dimensions of space.
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