“I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.”
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan
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Oscar Wilde 812
Irish writer and poet 1854–1900Related quotes
Jacobs v. Credit Lyonnais (1884), L. R. 12 Q. B. D. 601; 53 L. J. Q. B. 159.
“There's a rule, I think. You get what you want in life, but not your second choice too.”
Mikhail Baryshnikov at the 1978 Kennedy Center Honours for Fred Astaire and George Balanchine, as quoted in Satchell, Tim. Astaire, The Biography. Hutchinson, London. 1987. ISBN 0-09-173736-2 p. 255.
“Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.”
Travis McGee series, A Deadly Shade of Gold (1965)
Context: I know just enough about myself to know I cannot settle for one of those simplifications which indignant people seize upon to make understandable a world too complex for their comprehension. Astrology, health food, flag waving, bible thumping, Zen, nudism, nihilism — all of these are grotesque simplifications which small dreary people adopt in the hope of thereby finding The Answer, because the very concept that maybe there is no answer, never has been, never will be, terrifies them.
As quoted in "Miranda July Is Totally Not Kidding" by Katrina Onstad, in The New York Times (14 July 2011)
1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties
Variant: No hard and fast rule can be laid down as to where our legislation shall stop in interfering between man and man, between interest and interest.
Context: No hard-and-fast rule can be laid down as to where our legislation shall stop in interfering between man and man, between interest and interest. All that can be said is that it is highly undesirable, on the one hand, to weaken individual initiative, and, on the other hand, that in a constantly increasing number of cases we shall find it necessary in the future to shackle cunning as in the past we have shackled force. It is not only highly desirable but necessary that there should be legislation which shall carefully shield the interests of wage-workers, and which shall discriminate in favor of the honest and humane employer by removing the disadvantage under which he stands when compared with unscrupulous competitors who have no conscience and will do right only under fear of punishment. Nor can legislation stop only with what are termed labor questions. The vast individual and corporate fortunes, the vast combinations of capital, which have marked the development of our industrial system create new conditions, and necessitate a change from the old attitude of the state and the nation toward property.