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
I don't know that I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want some one who made it interesting.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that a fulfilling life is more about the excitement and interest brought by experiences than just ease and comfort.
Edith Wharton expresses a perspective on relationships and life in general, emphasizing that a partner or a companion should enrich one's life by making it interesting rather than merely comfortable. The desire for stimulation and challenge reflects a deeper understanding of what makes life meaningful, highlighting the value of experiences that may be difficult but ultimately rewarding.
In practice
During a motivational speech about the importance of challenging experiences.
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.
We just have to recognize life for what it is: a gift to be grateful for, not a property to cling to, hoard, or defend.
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft a-gley, And leave us nought but grief and pain, For promised joy.
When I'm dead are they going to remember me ? I don't really think about it, it's up to them. When I'm dead, who cares ? I don't.
If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain.
I wanted, I think, to acknowledge Luck: the chance of it, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others; made especially savage for children because they may not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it.
The rest of my days I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape. One day out on the ocean I will die β with my hand in the hand of some nice-looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch.
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