Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the notion of superiority and how it shapes one's perspective on life.
Oscar Wilde's quote reveals a cynical view of human relationships, suggesting that a sense of superiority over others is what provides a person with the strength to navigate life's challenges. It implies that a belief in one's own superiority can sustain an individual emotionally and psychologically, even if it stems from a flawed view of others' worth.
In practice
During a group discussion on personal growth and confidence, this quote can highlight the pitfalls of negative self-perception.
Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
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.
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.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
Without transformation, you can assume you're at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has been to see how little actual spiritual curiosity there is in so many people.
The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.
Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows clearly the principle of softness overcoming hardness.
Weβre too much ourselves. Afraid of letting go of what we are, in case we are nothing, and holding on so tight, we lose everything else.
...But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men.
You can neither lie to a neighbourhood park, nor reason with it. 'Artist's conceptions' and persuasive renderings can put pictures of life into proposed neighbourhood parks or park malls, and verbal rationalizations can conjure up users who ought to appreciate them, but in real life only diverse surroundings have the practical power of inducing a natural, continuing flow of life and use.
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