You’ve probably heard a great song by The Pretenders called “Message of Love”. But did you know that it contains a couple of lines from a play by Oscar Wilde?

From Chryssie Hynde’s lyrics:

Now look at the people
In the streets, in the bars
We are all of us in the gutter
But some of us are looking at the stars

Here’s a quote from the Oscar Wilde comedy that inspired Chryssie Hynde:

CECIL GRAHAM. Now, my dear Tuppy, don’t be led astray into the paths of virtue. Reformed, you would be perfectly tedious. That is the worst of women. They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they meet us, they don’t love us at all. They like to find us quite irretrievably bad, and to leave us quite unattractively good.

LORD DARLINGTON. [Rising from R. table, where he has been writing letters.] They always do find us bad!

DUMBY. I don’t think we are bad. I think we are all good, except Tuppy.

LORD DARLINGTON. No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

That last line rocks.