“A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.”

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure." by Oscar Wilde?
Oscar Wilde photo
Oscar Wilde 812
Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

Related quotes

Susan Sontag photo

“The discovery of the good taste of bad taste can be very liberating. The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

"Notes on 'Camp'" (1964), note 54, p. 291
Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)
Context: The discovery of the good taste of bad taste can be very liberating. The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak. Here Camp taste supervenes upon good taste as a daring and witty hedonism. It makes the man of good taste cheerful, where before he ran the risk of being chronically frustrated. It is good for the digestion.

André Maurois photo

“A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Thinking

Simon Sinek photo

“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”

Simon Sinek (1973) British/American author and motivational speaker

Source: Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo

“A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying — to others and to yourself.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

Variant translations:
Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea — he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility… Do get up from your knees and sit down, I beg you, these posturings are false, too.
Part I, Book I: A Nice Little Family, Ch. 2 : The Old Buffoon; as translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, p. 44
The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

“The great man is the man who can get himself made and who will get himself made out of anything he finds at hand.”

Gerald Stanley Lee (1862–1944) Americna minister

Book II, Chapter XV.
Crowds (1913)

Democritus photo

“The brave man is not only he who overcomes the enemy, but he who is stronger than pleasures. Some men are masters of cities, but are enslaved to women.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Freeman (1948), p. 163
Variant: The brave man is he who overcomes not only his enemies but his pleasures. There are some men who are masters of cities but slaves to women.

Paulo Coelho photo
Epictetus photo
Horace photo

“He will through life be master of himself and a happy man who from day to day can have said, "I have lived: tomorrow the Father may fill the sky with black clouds or with cloudless sunshine."”
Ille potens sui laetusque deget, cui licet in diem dixisse "vixi: cras vel atra nube polum pater occupato vel sole puro."

Horace book Odes

Book III, ode xxix, line 41
John Dryden's paraphrase:
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He, who can call to day his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day.
Odes (c. 23 BC and 13 BC)

Related topics