i am not young enough to know everything

“I am not young enough to know everything.”

~Oscar Wilde

Photobucket

Born:  October 16, 1854 in Dublin, Ireland

Died: November 30, 1900 (aged 46) in Paris, France

Occupation:  Playwright, novelist, poet

Nationality:  Irish

My impression of this quote is that only young children know everything. When they get older and slower in the mind, they are less likely to believe and therefore to less likely to know the most about unusual but interesting things.

Children believe in fairy tales or some forms of magical happenings, and they also believe in scientifically-incorrect theories such as aliens and Area 54. They believe in certain legends, myths, and fables, and all kinds of other stories.

Oscar Wilde was sometimes called the Man of Barbed Wit, because he could think of many insults to spout at one time that made many people laugh, and many people scowl. He was extremely smart until the day he died; never letting anyone place him as the butt of a joke.

He is saying in this quote that you only believe all those amazing things once, when you are a child. After you age, you begin to think of all those amazing things as foolishness, infantine. This is why it is good to enjoy being young while you are.

The insightful analysis of Oscar Wilde’s quote comes from a child… my young friend, Jonathan.

Jon is 12 and borders on brilliance… and I’m trying to encourage him to write some stuff for us. He has a quick, deep mind and when you meet the intellect of a 12-year-old, it can be both astounding and refreshing. And, as I think of it, life affirming.

I love what Jon wrote and how he thought of Mr. Wilde’s words.

Enjoy the wisdom of youth…

67 comments

Skip to comment form

    • pfiore8 on May 5, 2008 at 03:36
      Author

    and for the lovely Oscar Wilde too!!!

  1. tips for you too??  How about 1/3 to each of you  ;D

    • RiaD on May 5, 2008 at 03:50

    very good to remember that foolishness, that amazement when you get older….to never believe you’ve totally grown up….(i still say ‘when i grow up i’m going to…’) to save a wee bit of room in your grown-up’ed-ness for magic to grow…

    thanks pf~ for bringing us jon’s insights…

    • Edger on May 5, 2008 at 04:10

    You have a gift for understatement, pfiore8.

  2. It’s Area 51. Or am I missing something?

  3. but I am also fifteen.

    By some quirk of nature I might still connect to the souls of children who by nature are closer to God.

    https://www.docudharma.com/show

    Is it education or indoctrination.

    I am old enough to realize the gifts I have lost.

  4. I’d love to read Jon around these parts. In addition to the reading of Wilde’s quotation that you suggest here, I think there’s also an encrypted irony–that there is one stage and aspect of youth characterized by know-it-all-ism, a stubborn certitude. Sometimes aging brings the wisdom of knowing the limits of our powers, the impossibility of “knowing everything,” the uncertainty of life, finitude in all its forms. I think that recognition combined with the unbridled enthusiasm of youth is a winning combo. Well, and, imho, loving-kindness is also required.  

  5. Then Nixon got elected and I’ve been suffering daily brain damage ever since.

    But I’m still smart enough to post here!

  6. 1.  The kid is really good.

    2.  Everybody should read Junot Diaz’s The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.  A fantastic Spanglish novel about people from the Dominican Republic.  The title “Wao” is a Spanglish pronunciation of “Wilde.”  No, I am not freely associating.

    3.  When Oscar Wilde was sent to prison, he saw convicts working outside the train window.  Said he, “If that’s how the Queen treats her convicts, she doesn’t deserve to have any.”  

  7. with about 100 kids aged 8-14…just like i do 2 nights a week and one weekend day, during track season…

    i think youths ability to know everything is a combination of the kind of willing acceptance you describe with the insular nature of their existence.  its kind of what’s described as ‘blissful ignorance’…to have no idea that there are things/concepts/ideas out there that would contradict your self- or world-view…or that gasp might make you re-consider what you ‘know’…

    i think mental maturity includes that acceptance that there are things you dont know….cant know…maybe shouldnt know.  

    and, sure, it must be a comfort to feel you know everything…but what an empty feeling it would be if you felt there was nothing ‘more’…to learn or to know…

    that would just suck.

    • Metta on May 5, 2008 at 20:49

    “Ah, but I was so much older than, I’m younger than that now”

    Another quote along an ageless time and timeless age theme.  These could mean the same thing or the opposite, or something completely different altogether.  they’re both good mental puzzles

    Jon sounds like a cool kid!

  8. Maybe.  I always thought, though, that in that line he was referring to the arrogance of “youth” or adolescence, or the state of permanent “adolescence” (see Bush, G.W.; Cheney, R.; Mainstream Media), in which one erroneously assumes that one knows everything.  Those of us who grow up outgrow that phase.

    (I haven’t read the line in context, though, so I may be completely wrong.)

  9. “Equality,” I spoke the word

    As if a wedding vow.

    Ah, but I was so much older then,

    I’m younger than that now.

    “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child” Pablo Picasso

Comments have been disabled.