To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish writer and playwright, author of The Picture of Dorian Gray and the comedy The Importance of Being Earnest. He was as known for his wit in conversation as for his work. In 1895 he was sentenced to two years' hard labour for homosexuality, which broke him; he died in Paris three years after his release.
About this theme: Life
Life is the broadest theme in any collection of quotations and therefore the most uneven. The same heading holds Seneca's letter on the shortness of time and a sentence from a greetings card. The difference usually comes down to whether a line asks something of the reader or flatters them.
More by Oscar Wilde
- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
- Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
- The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
- Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
- Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
More on Life
- The unexamined life is not worth living.— Socrates
- It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
- True life is lived when tiny changes occur.— Leo Tolstoy
- Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.— Marcus Aurelius
- Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.— Albert Einstein