Some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love - why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there.
Interpretation
Emotions such as pride, care, and love often exist quietly and may not be immediately noticeable.
In this quote, Erma Bombeck reflects on the subtlety of certain emotions that can profoundly influence our lives, such as pride, caring, and love. She suggests that these feelings can be so faint and quiet that they often go unnoticed, highlighting the importance of being aware of the quieter, yet powerful, aspects of our emotional experiences.
In practice
During a heartfelt discussion about emotions, someone might say this quote to illustrate the subtlety of love.
We've got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache' cases and our three piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.
You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates.
Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It's the only thing "real" men do that doesn't seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it's on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.
Not everyone is comfortable with the kissing ritual. My husband is one of them. Her refuses to press lips with anyone except his wife, mother, and dog. If someone wanted to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he would refuse until he had been formally introduced.
There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
Maybe age is kinder to us than we think. With my bad eyes, I can't see how bad I look, and with my rotten memory, I have a good excuse for getting out of a lot of stuff.
Until we have seen someone's darkness, we don't really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone's darkness, we don't really know what love is.
Perfect love is the most beautiful of all frustrations because it is more than one can express.
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now so he shall never know how I love him and that not because he's handsome Nelly but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of his and mine are the same and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning or frost from fire.
It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.
Love, it seems to me, is that condition in which one is most contentedly oneself.
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