The wisdom of Oscar Wilde (part 3)

"What is a cynic?
             A man who knows the price of everything
                          and the value of nothing."
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

One of my personal advisors is firm on this point: she says she is, in many circumstances, a cynic, and yet she is far from ignorant of the value of things.

I agree with her objection to Oscar's felicitous epigram, she called him on it, I think he was insufficiently precise in defining the so-called cynic. Being a cynic goes much deeper.....

I'm not so sure that a cynic must claim sure knowledge, a priori, in order to claim the title…..in any event, a cynic certainly can ply his trade without complete knowledge….I suspect that with a little dose of common sense, and the ability to prefer reality most of the time, and the inclination to recognize the phonies at your local bonfire of the vanities, you can step right up to the microphone and be a respectable cynic, no problem at all…..


Better yet, be a full-blown realist. I'm comfortable with the notion that a realist is a cynic who knows too much, and cares too much, to simply be a plain old garden variety Oscar Wilde-type cynic….my advice is: Be a realist…..and then, if, on occasion, for recreational purposes, you wanna dabble one toe into your old "La Cynique" shoes and do a two-step or two, and call down imprecations on the Undesirables, with a pure heat, I say, no problem at all…..they deserve it.

More Oscar Wilde....

Yet even more Oscar Wilde.....

George Bernard Shaw on cynicism....