Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet, novelist, and playwright, born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College and Oxford. He became one of London’s most talked-about literary figures in the late 19th century, popular among the people for his sharp wit, flamboyant style, and love of paradox.His words are still famous today for delivering profound messages, humour, and interesting hints about human nature.His plays are a storehouse of witty and funny sentences that often resurface even today. This is one of those sentences from a character in one of his popular plays that explains a very real-life situation humorously.Let’s dig in to findout more
Quote of the day
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde
What does the quote mean
Oscar Wilde wrote this line in his play An Ideal Husband, and a character named Lord Goring, a witty, slightly lazy aristocrat who never seems to take his own advice seriously, speaks these. But in essence, that’s the joke.Goring says it right after telling a young woman to go to bed, something he has no intention of doing himself. It’s just the classic Wilde way of throwing a comic line that turns out to hold more truth than the serious speeches around it..Although it sounds quite funny on the surface, underneath the humour is a simple cue about actual human nature: we are far better at diagnosing other people’s problems than our own. It’s easy to tell a friend to leave a bad relationship, quit a job that’s draining them, or stop overthinking something. It’s much harder to do the same when it’s our own life in the same situation.His words also signal a larger message: knowledge locked inside your head, unspoken, helps no one- surprisingly, not even you- since you already know it and still don’t act on it. Instead it only comes alive again when shared.
Wilde’s idea is relevant even today
Today, immense information is available online, and much of it is dispensed by people who don’t fully follow it themselves. That’s not hypocrisy; it is actually true human nature and how humans work. Knowing what’s good for you and actually doing it are two completely different skills, and most of us are better at the first than the second.Instead of feeling guilty for not always practicing what you preach, Wilde suggests you just pass the good advice along anyway. Someone else might be in exactly the right place to use it, even if you’re not.
