They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything.
Edith WhartonRead
To be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it?
Interpretation
Valuing the ability to confront and accept life's realities over material comforts.
Edith Wharton's quote emphasizes the importance of facing life honestly and openly as the greatest achievement one can aspire to. The metaphor of living in a garret, a small and often uncomfortable space, signifies that enduring hardships is worthwhile if it leads to genuine living and understanding of oneself and the world.
In practice
During a motivational speech about embracing challenges, one might quote this to highlight the value of authenticity over comfort.
They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything.
They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods
Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
And I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.
As he paid the hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. 'After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each otherβs angles,' he reflected; but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep
There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it.
My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief, Are mine alone!
When it's time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.
I think everybody needs a passion. Whether it's one passion or a hundred, that's what keep life interesting.
It's funny, when you're a child you think time will never go by, but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you're on the fast train to Memphis. I guess life just slips up on everybody. It sure did on me.
Get busy living, or get busy dying.
The most important thing in your life is to live your life with integrity and to not give in to peer pressure to try to be something that you're not.
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