Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that while asking for help may be safer, taking something for oneself is a more noble action.
Oscar Wilde's quote contrasts the act of begging with that of taking, implying a hierarchy of moral actions. Begging is presented as a safer option because it avoids the potential consequences of taking, which can be seen as more courageous or assertive. However, Wilde elevates taking above begging in terms of nobility and self-agency, suggesting that pursuing one's desires and needs independently, even at risk, carries a higher moral value.
Themes
BeggingTakingNobilityActionRisk
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about pursuing one's dreams, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of taking initiative.
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
We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.
Ram DassRead
If you keep on buying things made by child slaves in such conditions, you are equally responsible for the perpetration of slavery.
Kailash SatyarthiRead
Neurosis is the natural by-product of pain avoidance.
Carl JungRead
I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage. Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.
Edward R. MurrowRead
The libertarian sees the State as a giant gang of organized criminals, who live off the theft called "taxation" and use the proceeds to kill, enslave, and generally push people around. Therefore, any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly as possible. Any person or group who liberates such property, who confiscates or appropriates it from the State, is performing a virtuous act and a signal service to the cause of liberty.
Murray RothbardRead
Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they are βpoor and blankβ. This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for changes, the desire for action and the desire for revolution. On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.
Mao ZedongRead