“One should always be a little improbable.”

— Oscar Wilde, book Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young

Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "One should always be a little improbable." by Oscar Wilde?

Oscar Wilde812

Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

Related quotes

“Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance. Just as I am improbable here, in Illinois, in a small town by a quiet lake. All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 134

“Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse. To discover little faults has been always the particularity of such brains that are a little or not at all above the average. The superior ones keep quiet or say something against the whole and the great minds transform without blaming.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

K 39
Variant translation: Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)

“The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“One should always be in love. That's the reason one should never marry.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“One always adds a little of one's soul to what one thinks.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“The idea of knowledge as an improbable structure is still a good place to start. Knowledge, however, has a dimension which goes beyond that of mere information or improbability. This is a dimension of significance which is very hard to reduce to quantitative form. Two knowledge structures might be equally improbable but one might be much more significant than the other.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, 1968, p. 142

“Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

"Hip, Hell, and the Navigator" in Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988) edited by J. Michael Lennon.
Source: Advertisements for Myself

“The more improbable the message, the less "compressible" it is, and the more bandwidth it requires. This is Shannon's point: the essence is its improbability.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part One, Entropy, Randomness, Disorder, Uncertainty, p. 57
Fortune's Formula (2005)

“On identical twins - You always get a little snidey one.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 2 Episode 1
On Biology

“One should work to his last breath. Idleness should always be avoided.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Karma yoga
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 25 December 1981