QuoteProject
What consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure. Repentance is quite out of date.
Oscar Wilde
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote suggests that in modern times, people find comfort in pleasure rather than feeling remorse for their actions.

Oscar Wilde's quote highlights a shift in societal values, where the pursuit of pleasure has overtaken the need for reflection and remorse. In today's world, the idea of guilt or repentance seems antiquated; instead, individuals prioritize immediate gratification and enjoyment, often overlooking the moral implications of their choices.

Themes

PleasureRepentanceSocietyValuesGratification

In practice

Example use cases

During a seminar on modern ethical dilemmas, this quote could be used to illustrate how contemporary society prioritizes pleasure.

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

An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality.
Joseph AddisonRead
Who do I belong to? How come I mortgaged my being till I don't belong to myself? How come I sold my blood? And who now owns my indecisions, my hands, my private pain, my pride?
Pablo NerudaRead
You don't reason with intellectuals. You shoot them.
Napoleon BonaparteRead
What we make testifies who we are. People can sense care and can sense carelessness. This relates to respect for each other and carelessness is personally offensive.
Jonathan IveRead
Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else.
Charles SpurgeonRead
Freedom is just another word: It seems to get truer the older I get.
Kris KristoffersonRead

A little wisdom, now and then

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