Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the notion of superiority and how it shapes one's perspective on life.
Oscar Wilde's quote reveals a cynical view of human relationships, suggesting that a sense of superiority over others is what provides a person with the strength to navigate life's challenges. It implies that a belief in one's own superiority can sustain an individual emotionally and psychologically, even if it stems from a flawed view of others' worth.
Themes
SuperiorityConsciousnessLifeInferiorityPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
During a group discussion on personal growth and confidence, this quote can highlight the pitfalls of negative self-perception.
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
Murder will out, this my conclusion.
Geoffrey ChaucerRead
I've come to think that's what heaven is- a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.
Christina Baker KlineRead
We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or to educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory.
Karl HessRead
Religion is a superstition that originated in man`s mental inability to solve natural phenomena. The Church is an orgainized institution that has always been stumbling to block progress.
Emma GoldmanRead
As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
Herman MelvilleRead
The river is everywhere at the same time . . . everywhere and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.
Hermann HesseRead