Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
Interpretation
Self-reproach can offer a sense of control over blame.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde suggests that indulging in self-reproach provides a peculiar form of luxury because it allows individuals to absolve themselves from external judgment. By blaming ourselves, we shield ourselves from the blame of others, creating an illusion of control and superiority over our own faults compared to how others might perceive us.
In practice
A motivational speaker could use this quote to discuss the benefits of personal accountability.
Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
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.
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.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
Reckon then that to acquire soul-winning power, you will have to go through mental torment and soul distress. You must go into the fire if you are going to pull others out of it, and you will have to dive into the floods if you are going to draw others out of the water. You cannot work a fire escape without feeling the scorch of the conflagration, nor man a lifeboat without being covered with the waves.
Even though I am nearly deaf, I seem to be gifted with a kind of inner hearing which enables me to detect sounds and noises which the ordinary person does not hear.
A proverb is much matter distilled into few words.
I knew if I waited around long enough something like this would happen.
One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats - and one always secretes too much jelly.
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