Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
It was you I thought of all the time, I gave to them the love you did not need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The speaker reflects on how their love was directed towards others who did not truly need it, as it was meant for someone else.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde captures the essence of misplaced love and affection one might feel towards someone who does not reciprocate those feelings. The speaker confesses that while they were always thinking of the beloved person, their love was instead bestowed upon others who were not deserving of it, thus emphasizing the pain of unrequited love and the misallocation of emotional resources.
Themes
LoveUnrequitedEmotionAffectionDevotion
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about unrequited love during a literary analysis class.
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.
Oscar WildeRead
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
Oscar WildeRead
Similar quotes
Love is everything. It is the key to life, and its influences are those that move the world.
Ralph Waldo TrineRead
He looked like the love thoughts of women.
Zora Neale HurstonRead
Don't weep, insects -- Lovers, stars themselves, Must part.
Kobayashi IssaRead
As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.
John GreenRead
There comes a holy _x000D_ and transparent time _x000D_ when every touch _x000D_ of beauty _x000D_ opens the heart _x000D_ to tears. _x000D_ This is the time _x000D_ the Beloved of heaven _x000D_ is brought tenderly on earth. _x000D_ This is the time _x000D_ of the opening _x000D_ of the ROSE.
RumiRead
His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.
James JoyceRead