QuoteProject
Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.
Oscar Wilde
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote critiques the absurdity of mourning someone's presence rather than appreciating their company.

In this quote, Oscar Wilde humorously observes the irrationality of being overly somber about a person's visit, suggesting that it is foolish to mourn someone who is actively present. He emphasizes the importance of embracing joy and levity in social interactions rather than adopting a melancholic demeanor in the face of companionship, thus highlighting the inconsistencies in human behavior and the need for a lighter perspective on life.

Themes

MourningAbsurdityJoyCompanionshipCritique

In practice

Example use cases

During a toast at a gathering, to encourage a light-hearted atmosphere.

More from Oscar Wilde

Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
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

Similar quotes

So she was considering in her own mind...whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up & picking the daisies.
Lewis CarrollRead
All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Great events make me quiet and calm; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.
Queen VictoriaRead
I'm not sure if I could tell the difference—between just staring into space and thinking. We're usually thinking all the time, aren't we? Not that we live in order to think, but the opposite isn't true either—that we think in order to live. I believe, contrary to Descartes, that we sometimes think in order not to be. Staring into space might unintentionally have the opposite effect.
Haruki MurakamiRead
Figuring out who you are is the whole point of the human experience.
Anna QuindlenRead
To destroy guide-boards that point in the wrong direction . . . to drive the fiend of fear from the mind . . . is the task of the Freethinker.
Robert Green IngersollRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.