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
The very good people didn't convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands — and yet you hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the complexity of moral choices and the understanding of true virtue amidst temptation.
In this quote, Edith Wharton explores the notion that true goodness and virtue are not merely the absence of temptation or wrongdoing, but rather an informed choice to resist the allure of easy happiness that is often achieved through betrayal or harm to others. It suggests that a deeper understanding of life, including its struggles and the moral dilemmas it presents, is essential for genuine compassion and integrity.
Themes
TemptationVirtueHappinessDisloyaltyUnderstandingMoral Choices
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about integrity, one might say, 'As Edith Wharton once pointed out, real virtue is understanding the world while resisting temptation.'
More from Edith Wharton
All quotes →They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods
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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 other’s 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
Edith WhartonRead
There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it.
Edith WhartonRead
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