Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Being discussed is preferable to being ignored, as it indicates presence and impact in society.
This quote by Oscar Wilde emphasizes the importance of recognition and the desire for social engagement. Being the subject of conversation, whether positively or negatively, suggests that one has made an impression or connection with others, whereas the absence of such dialogue signifies a lack of significance in social dynamics.
Themes
RecognitionImpactConversationSocialExistence
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of public opinion, I might say this quote to illustrate the power of conversation.
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
β''Just think, never to be glad or disappointed. Never to like anyone and get cross at him and forgive him. Never to sleep or feel cold, never to make a mistake and have a stomach-ache and be cured from it, never to have a birthday party, drink beer, and have a bad conscience... How terrible.
Tove JanssonRead
I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.
George WillRead
Nobody can acquire honor by doing what is wrong.
Thomas JeffersonRead
I think the entire message of the psychedelic experience, which is basically the sine qua non of the rebirth of alchemical understanding, the very basis of that understanding is that nature seeks to communicate.
Terence MckennaRead
It's wrong to treat Muslims as if they will never find their John Stuart Mill. Christianity and Judaism show people can be very dogmatic and then open up.
Ayaan Hirsi AliRead
When you're out of your own cultural context you have conversations with yourself that you just don't have at any other point in your life. When you're in a hotel room on the border between India and Nepal you can really discover things about yourself.
David MitchellRead