Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that deception can play a crucial role in human interactions by providing pleasure and charm in social contexts.
Oscar Wilde reflects on the nature of liars in society, indicating that their primary goal is to enchant others and enhance social interactions. He posits that the charm and pleasure derived from deception serve as foundational elements in civilized society, provoking thought about the moral implications of such behavior and its impact on human relationships.
Themes
DeceptionSocietyCharmPleasureRelationships
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about the role of honesty in friendships.
More from Oscar Wilde
All quotes βLondon 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.
Oscar WildeRead
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.
Oscar WildeRead
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
Oscar WildeRead
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
Oscar WildeRead
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
Oscar WildeRead
Similar quotes
If, sir, men were all virtuous, I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds neither wall, nor mountains, nor seas could afford any security.
Samuel JohnsonRead
A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself.
Tom StoppardRead
Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
We are not just bundles of atoms being pushed around. But, there's something spiritual about us whether we give that a religious interpretation or not. And so, it's that sense of there being dignity to life that I associate with the word God. I mean, that's probably a pretty radical and agnostic way of interpreting it. But, that's what I think.
Martha NussbaumRead
What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?
Blaise PascalRead
We've got to deal with the fact that the church has been violently prejudiced against gay people. We've murdered them; we've burned them at the stake; we've run them out of town for something over which they have no control. And that's immoral.
John Shelby SpongRead