Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Arguing often stems from a lack of understanding and clarity in thought.
Oscar Wilde's quote suggests that those who engage passionately in arguments often do so from a place of confusion or ignorance. Instead of fostering understanding or seeking truth, they cling to their stances out of a disorientation that prevents clear reasoning or intellectual growth. Arguments become a reflection not of knowledge, but of the absence of it, indicating a deeper struggle within individuals to comprehend complex truths.
Themes
ArgumentIntellectUnderstandingWisdomConfusion
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about morality, one might use this quote to highlight the futility of arguing without a solid foundation.
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
To solve a problem or to reach a goal, you don't need to know all the answers in advance. But you must have a clear idea of the problem or the goal you want to reach.
W. Clement StoneRead
Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.
M. Scott PeckRead
Humility, as we all know, is one of those virtues that is never gained by seeking it. The more we pursue it the more distant it becomes. To think we have it is sure evidence that we don't.
Richard J. FosterRead
On matters beyond his ken a gentleman speaks with caution. If names are not right, words are misused. When words are misused, affairs go wrong. When affairs go wrong, courtesy and music droop, law and justice fail. And when law and justice fail them, a people can move neither hand nor foot. So a gentleman must be ready to put names in speech, to put words into deeds. A gentleman is nowise careless of words.
ConfuciusRead
Donβt get caught up in hopes of what youβll achieve and how good your situation will be some day in the future. What you do right now is what matters.
Pema ChodronRead
Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge.
Francis BaconRead