Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.

Hurrying is usually treated as a sign of seriousness, but this line suggests the opposite: the things that matter most deserve our unhurried attention. It plays on the old proverb that a job worth doing is worth doing well, and swaps "well" for "slowly" with a wink. Coming from Mae West, whose stage and screen persona ran on playful innuendo and a love of pleasure, the joke is obvious, but it also carries a real point. Savoring is a skill, and rushing often means missing the very thing we were after. Like many popular quotations, its exact source is hard to pin down, though it is widely credited to her.

Beneath the humor sits an idea familiar from the slow-living tradition and from older philosophies that prize attention and enjoyment over mere efficiency. Speed measures how quickly something is finished, not how fully it is experienced.

Today, someone might apply it by cooking one meal a week without a podcast or a phone nearby, chopping carefully, tasting as they go, and then eating at a proper table. The meal takes longer, and it tends to be better remembered.