Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Oscar Wilde suggests that wealth inequality leads to unfair happiness among individuals.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde critiques the social and economic disparities that allow some wealthy individuals, particularly bachelors, to enjoy an elevated level of happiness while others suffer from poverty and hardship. By proposing a heavy tax on rich bachelors, he advocates for a more equitable distribution of wealth that would promote a fairer society, where no individual should feel excessively happy while others are left struggling.
Themes
WealthHappinessEqualitySocial JusticeTaxation
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech advocating for economic reform, one might quote Wilde to highlight the need for fair taxation.
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
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For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his cotemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.
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Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation. [However disappointment can always be removed if we remember it could have turned out worse.]
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This is the reason we cannot complain of life: it keeps no one against his will.
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