Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that while asking for help may be safer, taking something for oneself is a more noble action.
Oscar Wilde's quote contrasts the act of begging with that of taking, implying a hierarchy of moral actions. Begging is presented as a safer option because it avoids the potential consequences of taking, which can be seen as more courageous or assertive. However, Wilde elevates taking above begging in terms of nobility and self-agency, suggesting that pursuing one's desires and needs independently, even at risk, carries a higher moral value.
Themes
BeggingTakingNobilityActionRisk
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about pursuing one's dreams, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of taking initiative.
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
Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.
Napoleon BonaparteRead
A vision should be judged by the clarity of its values, not the clarity of its implementation path [in Mediated Modeling page 43]
Donella MeadowsRead
The seventeenth century is everywhere a time in which the state's power over everything individual increases, whether that power be in absolutist hands or may be considered the result of a contract, etc. People begin to dispute the sacred right of the individual ruler or authority without being aware that at the same time they are playing into the hands of a colossal state power.
Jacob BurckhardtRead
Look into any man's heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed.
Henrik IbsenRead
Our idea of what constitutes social good has advanced with the procession of the ages, from those desperate times when just to keep body and soul together was an achievement, to the great present when "good" includes an agreeable, stable civilization accessible to all, the opportunity of each to develop his particular genius and the privilege of mutual usefulness.
Frances PerkinsRead
Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.
Jared DiamondRead