A touching reminder by Oscar Wilde, a complex character, that we are here to live, not to exist, though many people face circumstances that make it a miracle if they manage this feat.

‘To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.’

The two young ladies captured in the photos are burstingly alive, so I have featured them as a counterweight to Wilde’s sad assertion.

Source: Oscar Wilde, quoted in John Sutherland, A Little History of Literature (New Haven: Yale Univ Press, 2013), p.137

Photo credits: Himanshu Singh Gurjar and Aravind Kumar at unsplash.com