"I wonder who it was defined man..." - Quote by Oscar Wilde
I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.
More by Oscar Wilde
“Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.”
“Really, this horrid House of Commons quite ruins our husbands for us. I think the Lower House by far the greatest blow to a happy married life that there has been since that terrible thing called the Higher Education of Women was invented.”
“America is one long expectoration.”
More on Human Nature
“Through winter-time we call on spring,And through the spring on summer call,And when the abounding hedges ringDeclare that winter's best of all:And after that there's nothing goodBecause the spring time has not come-Not know that what disturbs our bloodIs but its longing for the tomb.”
“A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.”
“Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words, "Behold Plato's man!"”