QuoteProject
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
Oscar Wilde
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Being labeled a sinner can inflate one's sense of self-importance and ego.

Oscar Wilde's quote reflects on the nature of vanity and self-perception. It suggests that the act of being labeled as a sinner does not just indicate wrongdoing but can also lead to an inflated sense of self-worth, as the individual may become preoccupied with their identity as a sinner, potentially seeing themselves as more significant than others who are not labeled in the same way.

Themes

VanitySinSelf-PerceptionEgoJudgment

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be used in a discussion about self-esteem and morality.

More from Oscar Wilde

Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
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.
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

Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, / The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young.
Walt WhitmanRead
There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the sadness of life lies in that fact. In the course of a single second, our senses of sight, of hearing, of smell, register (knowingly or not) a swarm of events and a parade of sensations and ideas passes through our head. Each instant represents a little universe, irrevocably forgotten in the next instant.
Milan KunderaRead
Don't tell them too much about your soul. They're waiting for just that.
Jack KerouacRead
Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George OrwellRead
If I didn't care about doing right and didn't feel uncomfortable doing wrong, I should get on capitally.
Louisa May AlcottRead
We think we receive all that we perceive, but in fact, we actually give the sky its colour.
James TurrellRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Oscar Wilde | QuoteProject