Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of aspiring towards an ideal vision of society, or Utopia, which drives human progress.
Oscar Wilde suggests that a worldview lacking the concept of Utopia is incomplete, as it disregards humanity's inherent desire to aspire for something better. By presenting Utopia as a destination that inspires progress, Wilde implies that the pursuit of idealism propels society forward, motivating individuals to envision and strive for advancements in their lives and communities.
In practice
A motivational speech about innovation could include this quote to inspire a vision for the future.
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
The desire to live in our imagination is driven by this suspicion that we're disembodied sensibilities cobbled into our bodies. That idea has infused most of human thought since the very beginning.
There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees Heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes.
And priests dare babble of a God of peace, _x000D_ _x000D_ Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, _x000D_ _x000D_ Murdering the while, uprooting every germ _x000D_ _x000D_ Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, _x000D_ _x000D_ Making the earth a slaughter - house!
Relaxing your hair is like being in prison. You're caged in. Your hair rules you. You didn't go running with Curt today because you don't want to sweat out this straightness. You're always battling to make your hair do what it wasn't meant to do.
To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist; he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.
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