Quote Atlassourced quotes & context
Source identified
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Read & copy the quotation
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

Oscar Wilde

Download image (JPG)

Source
The Importance of Being Earnest
Date
1895
Local voice
Fictional character · Algernon Moncrieff
Meaning

Meaning of “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

Wilde resists neat moral simplification by reminding the reader that truth often arrives mixed with context and contradiction.

Source context

Where does it come from?

The Importance of Being Earnest, Act I; Algernon Moncrieff. Exact catalog wording is preserved in the scan-backed Samuel French acting text on Wikisource, scan leaf 14 / printed page 12. The acting-text witness is abridged elsewhere, so this record is bound only to its independently verified page.

Primary / edition source ↗

Speaker context

Why the local voice matters

The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1; Algernon delivers the purity-and-simplicity line as a comic epigram during the play’s conversation about truth and social performance.

Customize your imageTen designs · Square or portrait · Preview and share
Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

DeepFunnyMindPhilosophyShortThinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & JudgmentThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionTruthWords of Wisdom: Practical & Philosophical Counsel
Related quotations

Continue through nearby ideas

Source identified
To define is to limit.
Read & copy

“To define is to limit.”

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray — 1891 edition · 1891
Voice: Fictional character · Lord Henry Wotton
Meaning & context

Definitions clarify ideas but can also narrow them, especially when a label is treated as the complete reality of a person or experience.

Source details

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Chapter 17; Lord Henry answers the Duchess of Monmouth’s question “What are you?” with “To define is to limit.”

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
The world is a perpetual caricature of itself.
Read & copy

“The world is a perpetual caricature of itself.”

George Santayana · Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies · 1922
Meaning & context

Social appearances repeatedly exaggerate or contradict reality, making ordinary life look like an ongoing parody of its own pretensions.

Source details

Soliloquies in England, “Dickens”; Santayana uses caricature to describe the gap between living reality and conventional masks.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
Read & copy

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”

John Milton · Paradise Lost · 1667
Voice: Fictional character · Satan
Meaning & context

The line gives mental interpretation enormous power, while its speaker and dramatic context also caution against treating self-deception as wisdom.

Source details

Paradise Lost (1667), Book I, lines 254–255; Satan speaks the sentence beginning ‘The mind is its own place.’ This collection retains normalized modern orthography; the scan-backed 1667 transcription reads forms including ‘in it self’ and ‘Heav’n.’ Character context matters because this is Satan’s argument, not Milton speaking autobiographically.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.
Read & copy

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”

William Blake · The Marriage of Heaven and Hell · 1790
Meaning & context

Blake imagines habitual perception as a filter that narrows reality; cleansing it would reveal a less limited world.

Source details

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 14; Blake’s prose-poetic argument about the limits and cleansing of perception.

↓ Download image (JPG)