Keep Talking

Now I'm on to An Ideal Husband, also a play by Oscar Wilde. I must say Lord Goring is awfully witty.

"I love talking about nothing. It is the only I know anything about."

"It is a very dangerous thing to listen. If one listens one maybe convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person."

" I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself."

"It is always worth while asking a question, though it is not always worth while answering one.

"My doctor says I should not have any serious conversation after seven. It makes me talk in my sleep."

TY

Wave of Mutilation

And now here are quotes from A Woman of No Importance I find worthy. Also by Oscar Wilde.

"The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years. To hear them talk one would imagine they were in their first childhood. As far as civilisation goes they are in their second."

"Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and then human beings become a bore."

"The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life."

"The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

"The world is simply divided into two classes -- those who believe the incredible, like the public -- and those who do the improbable."

"There is no secret of life."

"All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction."

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."


Ah, sometimes I wish I came up with these quotes!

TY

Imitation of Life

I've been reading Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, a play. Here are a few quotes that I found interesting.

"Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, a woman who moralises is invariably plain."

"Women like to find us[men] quite irretrievably bad and to leave us quite unattractively good."

"What on earth should we men do going about with purity and innocence? A carefully thought out button hole is much more effective."

"In this world there are only two tragedy. One is not getting what one wants, the other is getting it."

"Cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."

"A sentimentalist is a man who sees absurd value in everything and doesn't know the market price of any single thing."

"Experience is a question of instinct about life."

"Good women may have terrible things in them, mad moods of recklessness, assertion, jealousy, sin. Bad women, as they are termed, may have in them sorrow, repentance, sacrifice."

All by Oscar Wilde, of cause.


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The Modern Age

"There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands."
-Oscar Wilde(Lady Windermere's Fan)

Light My Fire

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”
- Oscar Wilde(The Soul of Man Under Socialism)


I have nothing much to write about lately. Don't see it changing anytime soon either, especially since I have so many things I've yet to do and can't seem to get around to doing them. When the deadlines loom, I'll just have to savour the whoosing sound they make as they fly by(Adams, Douglas).

But I love the quotes section of this blog. Such as nice place to keep all the quotes I love together. So it is very likely that in the coming weeks I'll be posting only quotes here.


Currently reading: The Double Helix by J.D. Watson
If you love DNAs, it's a rather captivating book about how they arrive at the structure of DNA as we know it now.


Here's to Utopia.
TY

Space Oddity

I have a rather peculiar perception of the world. (That's not the revelation, knew that 32 millenniums ago.) But only today did I realise that, whenever I meet someone new, I have no interest whatsoever in things like where the person lives*, what the person does for a living, where the person is from or how many cars does the person have. Instead, I'm more interested in what the person likes or their thoughts on things.

It happens rather subconsciously. I'd much rather talk about their favourite writer or TV show than the fame and fortune they acquired last year. But now that I've given it some thought, it seems to make sense. I've never really been interested in all these material goods society seem to place so much importance on. Which explains it. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, I'm interested in what the person is, and not what the person has.

And this makes things rather difficult. Because as we all know, people like to talk about themselves. But unfortunately, the societal norm would much rather talk about what they have than what they are.

Perhaps this is why I am so anti-social.

Just to fit in. Oh, just to fit in.


On a related note(which might have contributed to my revelation), I highly recommend Oscar Wilde's essay called The Soul of Man Under Socialism. Print it out. Read it. Or just read it from there if trees are your thing. Well worth your half and hour or so. And no, it is not about communism. Don't be deterred from reading it just because of what you think it's about. The man is a genius.

For the record, I'm not an anarchist either.

And I'm done with Catch-22. Awesome, awesome book. Ought to review it later. Now on to Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer. Oh and I don't know why, but the pages of this book smells really nice. Even from reading distance away. None of the books from the library has smelt good thus far.
Also wondering what people think about Oasis's latest album. I have yet to check it out despite being an Oasis fan. So What's the story, morning glory?


* Sometimes I do like to ask about where people live for the sake of car-pooling or to have a new train buddy. But it has never crossed my mind to do so for the sake of class-categorising.


TY