Oscar Wilde in the 21st Century. What would he say?

What would you say?

The Oscar Wilde Society recently held a competition for members to come up with aphorisms and epithets that a 21st century Oscar Wilde might have said. One of my submissions made the short list of 20 out of 300 submissions. 

Since then I have come up with a few more. But can you guess which one made it to the list? Answers on a bee’s wing please. Enjoy!

Restraint of speech and imagination enslave ideas to the bondage of the masses.

Being told what to think, is the greatest luxury of 21st century life.

To explain my absence I tell my friends I am having issues.

The art of the influencer is not the same as the influence of art.

That subjects and topics could have ownership is fundamentally undemocratic.

Restrain imagination and all progress will cease.

Self-obsession, the 21st century’s favourite disease.

Health and fitness are vastly overrated.

Beauty and deception are natural partners.

In the digital age, opportunity and responsibility have become irreconcilable.

Morbidities are ambitions for the unrestrained appetite.

A convenient alternative to an alert intelligence is to be woke.

To label one’s sexuality is to confine it.

An agile mind may lurk behind a lardy physique.

Sex and labels are both so exciting, but not necessarily in the expected ways.

Diet at your peril.

Social media is neither social nor mediating.

Trump and Johnson are delightful entertainers. They take satire to a whole new level. 

Being fat is one of life’s great joys and its greatest sorrow.

Climate change is the planet’s way of telling us we’ve gone too far.

Having issues is a mysterious way to admit that there’s a problem. And problems are so much easier to address than issues.

What does should of mean? I should’ve asked before.

Leave a Reply