Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Imagination shapes our moral understanding, revealing the chaos of life and its injustice.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde reflects on the disordered nature of actual life contrasted with the logical structures imposed by imagination. He suggests that while reality is often chaotic and unjust—where the wicked go unpunished and the good overlooked—imagination allows us to grapple with moral complexities and gives weight to our actions, creating a sense of remorse for wrongdoing. Imagination serves as a guiding force that connects consequences to our choices, despite the randomness of real life.
Themes
ImaginationChaosMoralityLifeConsequences
In practice
Example use cases
During a class discussion on morality, this quote can illustrate the role of imagination in understanding justice.
More from Oscar Wilde
All quotes →London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don't know.
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When one has never heard a man's name in the course of one's life, it speaks volumes for him; he must be quite respectable.
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Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
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A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
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His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
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