If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself - a rare type in our time ... you rise from table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days. But Oh! my dear Ernest, to sit next to a man who has spent his life in trying to educate others! What a dreadful experience that is!
Oscar WildeMothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chap's bills and don't bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills.
Oscar WildeLADY STUTFIELD I adore silent men. MRS ALLONBY Oh, Ernest isn't silent. He talks the whole time. But he has got no conversation. What he talks about I don't know. I haven't listened to him for years.
Oscar WildeHow you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I canโt make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless." "Well, I canโt eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them." "I say itโs perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.
Oscar WildeIt is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.
Oscar Wilde