QuoteProject
To shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.
Oscar Wilde
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Avoiding life's challenges for the sake of security limits our experiences and growth.

This quote by Oscar Wilde emphasizes the folly of avoiding the difficulties and complexities of life in pursuit of safety. By choosing to 'shut one's eyes' to the struggles of existence, one may feel temporarily secure, but this self-imposed blindness means forsaking the richness of life's experiences, which can often lead to a deeper understanding and appreciation of living.

Themes

LifeExperienceSecurityCourageGrowth

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a motivational speech about overcoming fear to embrace life fully.

More from Oscar Wilde

Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
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

Similar quotes

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Richard DawkinsRead
'Smart growth' destroys the environment. 'Dumb growth' destroys the environment. The only difference is that 'smart growth' does it with good taste. It's like booking passage on the Titanic. Whether you go first-class or steerage, the result is the same.
Albert Allen BartlettRead
Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.
Upton SinclairRead
They sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable. Never again could it be cleansed; it would prove that man, the human species - we, in short - had the potential to construct an enormity of pain, and that pain is the only force created from nothing, without cost and without effort. It is enough not to see, not to listen, not to act.
Primo LeviRead
Five minutes are enough to dream a whole life, that is how relative time is.
Mario BenedettiRead
It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost Him crucifixion.
C. S. LewisRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.