Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Conscience and cowardice are two sides of the same coin, with conscience being a socially accepted term.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde suggests that what we often perceive as moral conscience may actually be a manifestation of cowardice. He implies that the motivations driving our ethical choices might not stem from noble intentions, but rather from a fear of judgment or consequences, thus questioning the true nature of moral integrity and the complexity of human motivations.
Themes
ConscienceCowardiceMoralityFearHuman Nature
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about moral dilemmas, this quote could be used to illustrate the complexity of ethical decision-making.
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
Life is not a struggle, not a tension. Life has not to be suffering. Life is bliss
Maharishi Mahesh YogiRead
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
H. L. MenckenRead
Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?
Ayn RandRead
When pain is unbearable it destroys us; when it does not it is bearable.
Marcus AureliusRead
If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits
Ruth BenedictRead
God grant you all your desires and accept my own hearty thanks for all your attention to me. Although indeed, those attentions have tried me more than death can now terrify me.
Lady Jane GreyRead