Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a struggle between indulgence and suffering, acknowledging the consequences of a lavish lifestyle.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde expresses a deep sense of regret for his extravagant lifestyle, recognizing that it brings suffering and detriment to his existence. He suggests that despite the pain and the 'penalty' of suffering it incurs, he feels unable to live any other way, highlighting the conflict between personal desires and the inevitable consequences of those choices.
Themes
ExtravaganceSufferingLife ChoicesRegretConsequences
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about the importance of moderation in life.
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
Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for.
Virginia WoolfRead
Is despair wrong? Isnβt it the natural condition of life after a certain age? β¦ After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment? Who wants to go on living? The eccentric, the religious, the artistic (sometimes); those with a false sense of their own worth. Soft cheeses collapse; firm cheeses endurate. Both go mouldy.
Julian BarnesRead
Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyRead
Without restoring an ethos of social responsibility, there can be no meaningful and sustained economic recovery.
Jeffrey SachsRead
Capitalism has forced everyone to overoptimize in order to compete.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
Nations have lost their old omnipotence; the patriotic tiedoes not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go and live where we will.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead