Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life is the most valuable subject to examine, despite its challenges and complexities.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde emphasizes the importance of understanding human life, suggesting that no other pursuit holds greater significance. He acknowledges the duality of existence, filled with both joy and suffering, and warns against superficiality in perception, as it may cloud our understanding and imagination.
Themes
LifeValuePainPleasureInvestigation
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophical debate on the meaning of life.
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.
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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
Try as they may to savor the taste of eternity, their thoughts still twist and turn upon the ebb and flow of things in past and future time. But if only their minds could be seized and held steady, they would be still for a while and, for that short moment, they would glimse the splendor of eternity, which is forever still.
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People have to be atomized and segregated and alone. They're not supposed to organize, because then they might be something beyond spectators of action. They might actually be participants if many people with limited resources could get together to enter the political arena. That's really threatening.
Noam ChomskyRead
The Dhamma has to sink deeply into the mind so that whatever we do, the mind has always goodness within it. All the ways of making merit are aiming at this. Goodness lies in the right view that is established in the mind. Then we don't have to celebrate it or let anybody know about it, simply let the mind have firm confidence in the goodness and keep going like this.
Ajahn ChahRead
An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others.
George SorosRead
Fixity is always momentary. But how can it always be so? If it were, it would not be momentary - or would not be fixity.
Octavio PazRead
The human mind moves always forward, alters its viewpoint and enlarges its thought substance, and the effect of these changes is to render past systems of thinking obsolete or, when they are preserved, to extend, to modify and subtly or visibly to alter their value.
Sri AurobindoRead