Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of sympathy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Empathy enhances the positive emotions we share, while sharing pain does not lessen the pain felt by others.
Oscar Wilde's quote highlights the idea that while sharing joy amplifies positive feelings in the world, sharing in another's suffering does not reduce the overall pain they experience. It suggests that our emotional connections can have differing impacts based on the nature of the feelings we share.
Themes
SympathyJoyPainEmpathyEmotions
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech at a charity event, I quoted Wilde to emphasize the importance of sharing joy to uplift the community.
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.
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Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
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A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
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His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
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