Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Indeed, as any one who has ever worked among the poor knows only too well, the brotherhood of man is no mere poet's dream, it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the harsh truth of human existence and the struggles faced by the poor, contrasting idealism with reality.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde emphasizes that the concept of 'the brotherhood of man' is not just an idealistic notion often romanticized by poets, but rather a sobering reality that exposes the hardships and humiliations experienced by those who are less fortunate. Wilde's statement serves as a critique of society's neglect of the poor and compels us to confront the uncomfortable truths of social inequality.
Themes
BrotherhoodPovertyRealityTruthSociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a charity event speech to highlight the need for social justice.
More from Oscar Wilde
All quotes →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.
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
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Don’t consent to be hurt and you won’t be hurt – this is a choice over which you have control
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You've seen what you've seen; you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world.
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Racism is not just slavery and Jim Crow. It is the daily violence that is enacted on our communities each and every day we live in this White supremacist society.
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Into this wild Abyss/ The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave--/ Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,/ But all these in their pregnant causes mixed/ Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,/ Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/ His dark materials to create more worlds,--/ Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend/ Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,/ Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith/ He had to cross.
John MiltonRead
A dog has the soul of a philosopher.
PlatoRead
Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead