Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Innocence can often be mistaken for a lack of awareness about the implications of one's actions.
This quote suggests that what may appear to be innocent behavior can sometimes stem from carelessness or indiscretion. Oscar Wilde plays with the idea that naivety can disguise the underlying motivations or repercussions of our actions, implying that one's disposition may not be as straightforward as it seems, and that innocence may merely be a façade over less innocent intentions or occurrences.
Themes
InnocenceIndiscretionNaivetyConsequencesActions
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about the complexities of youthful behavior and the misunderstandings that arise from it.
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
It is a time when oneβs spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up.
Mark TwainRead
Anything that is western origin, first you verify it, then accept it. Anything that is Indian origin, first accept it, then verify it if necessary.
Swami VivekanandaRead
The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
Thomas JeffersonRead
A slave is he who cannot speak his thoughts.
EuripidesRead
You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: There is nothing there...You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: This hum is the silence.
Annie DillardRead
There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
Eric HofferRead