Quote Of The Day By Oscar Wilde: 'And Unselfishness Is Letting Other People's Lives Alone, Not...'

Oscar Wilde was an Irish fiction writer, essayist, and playwright, and he was renowned for his wit and over-the-top style. He was born in Dublin in 1854 and educated at Trinity College and then Oxford. He worked as a teacher and a writer, and his first book of poems was published in 1881. His work didn't really take off until around 10 years later — "The Picture of Dorian Gray," the only novel that he ever wrote, was published in 1891.

It was his plays that really helped push him over the top as a public and literary figure. Between 1892 and 1895,"The Importance of Being Earnest," "Lady Windermere's Fan," and other plays of his were all produced in London. Wilde was also a leader in the aesthetic movement, which was all about "art for art's sake" (per British Library).

When it came to his personal life, Wilde married Constance Lloyd in 1884. The couple had two children together. Wilde also had a number of affairs with men, perhaps most famously with Lord Alfred Douglas, who was 16 years younger than him — at the time, homosexuality was illegal. Douglas' father knew about and didn't like the relationship, and Wilde ended up suing Douglas' father for libel after he essentially outed him. The author lost the case, and in 1895, he ended up imprisoned for two years for his relationships with men. Upon his release, Wilde moved to Paris, and he died there in 1900. Wilde lived a relatively short, but eventful life, and his sharp wit and intelligence are why he's today's quote of the day.

In "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," published in 1891 (and called just "The Soul of Man" at a later time), Oscar Wilde mused about how society should work and how individuals should live their lives. In it, he considered what made someone selfish or not, and he wrote, "And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them."

For someone like Wilde, who was known for his larger-than-life style and dedication to art and Aestheticism, he was likely judged by others and writing from personal experience. He didn't think that anyone should step into someone else's life and make it look the way they think it should look.

When you look at this quote in the context of his essay, Oscar Wilde was making the point that people should be able to dress, act, and live however they want, even if it doesn't conform with how others might want them to look and behave. Along with defining what is considered unselfishness, he defined selfishness as, " ... asking others to live as one wishes to live."

While he may have written this over 100 years ago, it's still a valid point. Just because something makes sense for you in your life doesn't mean that you should force it on someone else as the only way to live. Unselfishness is the clear virtue in this case, and it's what we should be striving toward. We would do better to live out our own lives in the manner that suits us best instead of getting worried about what other people are doing.

It was a literary, 19th-century way of saying to "mind your own business." People should be able to express themselves however they like. This sense of unique individuality is something we should look forward to seeing in others instead of trying to stamp it out. So long as it isn't doing harm to others, we'd do best to live and let live.

• "I can resist everything except temptation."
• "One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art."
• "To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul."
• "A man who does not think for himself does not think at all."