Life is too important to be taken seriously.

The popular form changes Wilde’s sentence. Darlington says life is too important ‘ever to talk seriously about’, a remark about conversation: the joke is that triviality is the proper tone for serious things. ‘Too important to be taken seriously’ turns it into a motto for not caring, which is a different and flatter thought. Wikiquote lists the misquotations ‘Life is far too important to be taken seriously’ and ‘Life is too important to take seriously’. According to Wikiquote, Wilde had already used the line in his first play, Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880): ‘Life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.’ The same idea is in the subtitle of The Importance of Being Earnest, ‘A Trivial Comedy for Serious People’.

In Lady Windermere’s morning-room, Lord Darlington has been joking with the Duchess of Berwick about marriage as a game in which wives hold all the honours and lose the odd trick. Lady Windermere calls him trivial and asks why he talks so trivially about life. He answers with this line. When the Duchess asks what he means, he declines to explain: ‘Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out’, and leaves, asking whether he may come to the ball that night.

Things that really matter are spoiled by solemn talk; wit is a way of treating them with respect. Darlington is defending his flippancy, and hinting that he hides real feeling behind it.

Used as a carefree slogan: don’t take life seriously. Darlington’s point is nearly the opposite: life matters so much that only lightness can speak of it, and in the next act he speaks to Lady Windermere with dangerous seriousness.

• A misquotationLife is too important to be taken seriously. The usual form, which changes ‘talk seriously about it’ to ‘be taken seriously’.
• ShortenedLife is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. Close to the play, with the question and the speaker dropped.

Life, Wisdom

• I can resist everything except temptation.
• The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
• To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
• I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
• I had the radio on. Marilyn Monroe

• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde

“Life is too important to be taken seriously.” Attributed to Oscar Wilde. Not in these words. The idea is in Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), Act I, said by Lord Darlington. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/life-is-too-important-to-be-taken-seriously/ (checked 20 October 2026).

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