Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
The sure way of knowing nothing about life is to try to make oneself useful.
Interpretation
Attempting to be useful often leads to misunderstanding life's complexities.
This quote from Oscar Wilde suggests that the pursuit of being useful can limit our understanding of life itself. It implies that focusing solely on practicality or utility may lead to a superficial grasp of deeper truths and the richness of human experience, indicating that wisdom comes from broader contemplation and engagement with life rather than just functionality.
In practice
A philosopher discussing the complexities of existence might reference this quote.
Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
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.
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.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
There is nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.
In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.
If you fail to take advantage of your enemies' collapse, they may recover.
To paraphrase several sages: Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.
money is not everything but it ranks right up there with oxygen
The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.
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