Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
We share emotions and actions with animals, but language elevates our existence.
Oscar Wilde's quote suggests that while humans and animals share many fundamental characteristics and emotions, it is our ability to communicate through language that distinguishes us and allows us to achieve a higher state of existence. This reflects on the significance of language not just as a tool for communication, but as a means to facilitate complex thoughts and ideas that shape human culture and society.
Themes
LanguageCommunicationEmotionAnimalsHumanity
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of communication in education, one might emphasize, 'As Oscar Wilde said, there is no mode of action that we do not share with the lower animals. It is language that sets us apart.'
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 would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
Bertrand RussellRead
Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die?
Charles DickensRead
If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But, of course, if you think some things really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will.
C. S. LewisRead
Loss of social standing is an ever-present threat for individuals whose social acceptance is based on behavioral traits rather than unconditional human value.
Melissa Harris-PerryRead
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead
Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?
George Bernard ShawRead