To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all
Source: Miscellaneous Aphorisms (1911)
Topic
From Nietzsche's claim that the world itself is will-to-power to Thoreau's observation that every child begins the world again, the scope here is genuinely large. Washington on governing without God; Shaw on a world so ugly that even the richest cannot buy otherwise; La Bruyère's two routes to getting on in life — industry or the stupidity of others. Browning on the average cabin of a life crossing the ocean. The collection does not agree with itself about what the world is, which is the point: writers from different centuries and continents looking at the same fact — human existence on a shared planet — and reaching completely different conclusions. The argument is in the range.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
Every child begins the world again
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other
A man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts.