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.
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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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It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders.
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I don't really know if it's the right thing to do, making new life. Kids grow up, generations take their place. What does it all come to? More hills bulldozed and more ocean fronts filled in? Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it?
Haruki MurakamiRead
The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
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A man who fears not God, will break all his laws with an easy conscience, but one who is the favorite of heaven, who has been indulged to sit at royal banquets, who knows the eternal love of God to him, cannot bear that there should be any evil way in him that might grieve the Spirit and bring dishonor to the name of Christ. A very little sin, as the world calls it, is a very great sin to a truly awakened Christian.
Charles SpurgeonRead