“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
Mae West
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To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
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About this quote
Meaning
Wilde is drawing a deliberate distinction between the mechanical fact of being alive and the much rarer act of truly living. To merely exist is to move through days without genuine engagement, passion, or self-expression. To live, in the sense he means, is to bring consciousness, individuality, and feeling to one's experience. The observation carries a quiet challenge: it asks the reader to honestly assess which category they fall into.
Context
This line comes from "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," an essay Wilde published in 1891. The piece is a wide-ranging argument for individual freedom and self-development, set against the backdrop of his broader social criticism. Wilde believed that poverty and conformity both crushed the human spirit, and the essay explores what a society might look like if people were genuinely free to become themselves. The quote reflects that central concern with authentic, fully realized human experience.
About the author
Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer born in Dublin in 1854, best known for his plays, his novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray," and his brilliant gift for aphorism. He was one of the most celebrated literary figures in late Victorian London, famous for both his sharp wit and his carefully crafted public persona. His later years were marked by a public trial and imprisonment, experiences that deeply shaped his final writings. He died in Paris in 1900, but his work has remained continuously in print and widely read ever since.
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Share this quote
“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love anymore. They don't teach you how to know what's happening in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”
“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
Douglas Adams · The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1979
