Daily Inspiration Quote by Oscar Wilde

Friendship, for Wilde, is never just friendship; its always a performance with casting notes. The opening gambit is a perfect Wildean bait-and-switch: he pretends to rank people by the most frivolous criteria (good looks) and the most respectable (good character), only to land on the line that matters - enemies chosen for intellect. Its a joke with teeth. He flatters the reader's vanity (who wouldnt want to be counted among the clever?) while quietly insulting the moralists who insist social life should be governed by virtue alone.

The subtext is that opposition is more revealing than affection. Friends can be accumulated through taste, fashion, or convenience; enemies are earned. To "choose" them suggests a kind of aesthetic control over conflict, but the real point is craft: a worthy adversary sharpens you, forces you to define yourself, gives your life narrative tension. Wilde treats the social world like a drawing room duel - wit as weapon, rivalry as refinement.

Context matters because Wilde is writing from a late-Victorian culture obsessed with respectability and moral accounting. His line mocks that obsession by treating ethics as second-tier, almost bureaucratic ("acquaintances") while elevating intellect as the only truly dangerous and therefore valuable trait. The final sentence - "cannot be too careful" - parodies prudential advice, as if picking enemies is like selecting a tailor. Behind the epigram is a realist's warning: the foolish enemy is the one who ruins you by accident; the clever one at least plays by recognizable rules.