The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish writer and playwright, author of The Picture of Dorian Gray and the comedy The Importance of Being Earnest. He was as known for his wit in conversation as for his work. In 1895 he was sentenced to two years' hard labour for homosexuality, which broke him; he died in Paris three years after his release.
About this theme: Philosophy
Philosophy always sits awkwardly in a collection of quotations: systems do not compress into a sentence, and that is exactly what is asked of them. Kant's ethics or Nietzsche's critique of morality do not fit into a single line without loss. What survives is the phrasing — often brilliant, but lifted out of the context that gave it weight.
More by Oscar Wilde
- To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
- Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
- Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
- Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
More on Philosophy
- The unexamined life is not worth living.— Socrates
- Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.— Baruch Spinoza
- The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.— Michel de Montaigne
- A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.— Blaise Pascal