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
It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the struggle of finding a better alternative to a flawed world.
Edith Wharton's quote speaks to the innate human tendency to criticize and despise the state of the world we live in, while simultaneously highlighting the difficulty of identifying or escaping to a better, more favorable place. It suggests a contemplation of our environment, suggesting that while it is easy to cast judgment, finding viable solutions or alternatives is a far more complex challenge.
Themes
WorldDespiseHabitableRegionAlternatives
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about resilience and adaptability in challenging situations.
More from Edith Wharton
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Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
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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.
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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
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There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it.
Edith WhartonRead
Similar quotes
Gods, religions and national boundaries are absolutely imaginary. They don't tend to exist. As soon as you pull back half a mile and look down at the Earth there are no national boundaries. There aren't even national boundaries when you get down and walk around. They're just imaginary lines we draw on maps. I just get fascinated by people who assume that things that are imaginary have no relevance to their lives.
Neil GaimanRead
Through violence, you may murder the hater, but you do not murder the hate.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read
Who knows if to live is to be dead, and to be dead, to live? And we really, it may be, are dead; in fact I once heard sages say that we are now dead, and the body is our tomb.
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The mystery of a person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for the godlike.
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The primary function of government is to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority of the poor.
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Throughout history many nations have suffered a physical defeat, but that has never marked the end of a nation. But when a nation has become the victim of a psychological defeat, then that marks the end of a nation.
Ibn KhaldunRead