Just Living Is Not Enough One

Spoken by the butterfly in Andersen's short fairy tale "The Butterfly" (Sommerfuglen), a gentle comedy about a bachelor butterfly's overly fastidious search for a wife. The line is the tale's most direct philosophical statement, slipped into a story otherwise told with ironic lightness. Andersen published the tale in 1861 as part of his later fairy tale collections, long after his most famous stories had established his reputation.