This quotation that "You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear." has circulated widely on social media and is clearly wrong and an example of an anonymous quote in need of an author.
It hardly seemed necessary to explain that the phraseology, not least reference to a fancy car, is unWildean.
WHERE IT ORIGINATED
Apparently the quotation goes back no further than 2006 in a girls’ magazine. Again the Quote Investigator has chapter and verse. Read more at the link below:
DID OSCAR WILDE EVER TRAVEL IN A MOTOR CAR?
Although he died in 1900, Oscar Wilde, surprisingly, did ride in a motor car (as well as owning a camera, and using the telephone).
Oscar Wilde’s ride in a motor car was in Gland, Switzerland, in 1900. Wilde was staying with a friend, Harold Mellor, who had recently acquired an automobile. Wilde wrote to Robbie Ross to say:
”the automobile was delightful, but, of course, it broke down: they, like all machines, are more wilful than animals – nervous, irritable, strange things: I am going to write an article on ‘nerves of the inorganic world’”.
Complete Letters (UK Edition), 1187.
The 1900 Daimler Mail Phaeton. (Wikimedia Commons)
