Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Ambition can often mask a lack of true achievement, representing a fallback for those who do not succeed.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde suggests that ambition, while often seen as a positive trait, can also be a misguided refuge for those who fail to accomplish their goals. It implies that simply having ambition is not enough; true success is measured by actual achievements rather than mere desires or aspirations.
Themes
AmbitionFailureSuccessAchievementGoals
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech to encourage students to achieve their goals.
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
I have known lots of millionaires who were not happy men; they had not got all they wanted and therefore had failed to find success in life. A Singalese proverb says: "He who is happy is rich, but it does not follow that he who is rich is happy." The really rich man is the man who has fewest wants.
Robert Baden-PowellRead
You may learn much more from a game you lose than from a game you win. You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player.
Jose Raul CapablancaRead
The only worthwhile achievements of man are those which are socially useful.
Alfred AdlerRead
Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.
Malcolm GladwellRead
When I went into the Montreal Games, nobody expected much out of me.
Nadia ComaneciRead