Book Review: Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast

After reading through Library Mindset’s The Art of Laziness, I gravitated towards something that could serve as a counterbalance. Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast by Oscar Wilde did the trick.

This book consists of 52 small pages filled with quotes from Oscar Wilde - I read through it in an afternoon and found the short quotes enjoyable and insightful.

I think Oscar Wilde’s works sometimes cut across, positively, as profoundly shallow because they illuminate aspects of society, that are, profoundly shallow... Wilde’s works are brilliant in offering perspective into how people behave and think and the faulty foundation on which some sociatel rules rest.

Wilde’s diplomatic approach to sharing his viewpoints forces one to grapple with how such a small remark delves so deeply into the truth. For instance, on page 49, Wilde delivers an unquestionably relevant soundbite: “The things of nature do not really belong to us; we should leave them to our children as we have received them.”

Another quote that struck a chord on page 19 remarked that “[a]nybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a wonderful nature- it requires, in fact, a nature that is truly Individualist - to sympathize with a friend’s successes.” Fairly self-explanatory in itself, but it is a genuinely timeless idea. An Individualist, someone uninterested in occupying their time solely with collecting the currency that purchases social strata, combined with an ability to exercise empathy, would lend itself to the personage uniquely positioned to ‘sympathize’ with others’ successes.

Wilde famously said, “The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it along to someone else…” Therefore, I will not reduce this work by referring to any of the quotes in this book as ‘advice’ - it may serve as an opportunity to understand the Wilde mindset, though. That being said, Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast offers an opportunity for reflection in addition to offering still sharply relevant critiques of society.