Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Conscience and cowardice are two sides of the same coin, with conscience being a socially accepted term.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde suggests that what we often perceive as moral conscience may actually be a manifestation of cowardice. He implies that the motivations driving our ethical choices might not stem from noble intentions, but rather from a fear of judgment or consequences, thus questioning the true nature of moral integrity and the complexity of human motivations.
Themes
ConscienceCowardiceMoralityFearHuman Nature
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about moral dilemmas, this quote could be used to illustrate the complexity of ethical decision-making.
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
I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.
Anne LamottRead
Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them. Stretch it as thin as the temple flesh of an ailing woman and still it serves to ache the bone and to move the bone about; and in like manner the night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in a torment. We will find no comfort until the night melts away; until the fury of the night rots out its fire.
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The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.
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Pride is at the bottom of a great many errors and corruptions, and even of many evil practices, which have a great show and appearance of humility.
Matthew HenryRead
The Bible has been the Magna Carta of the poor and of the oppressed.
Thomas HuxleyRead