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
What this quote means
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.
Themes
LifeInterestExperiencesRelationshipsFulfillment
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about the importance of challenging experiences.
More from Edith Wharton
All quotes →They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods
Edith WhartonRead
Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
Edith WhartonRead
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.
Edith WhartonRead
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
Similar quotes
Those around you can have their novellas, sweet, their short stories of cliché and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up Greek tragedy, those born into misery, destined to die in misery. But you, my bride of quietness, you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last.
Marisha PesslRead
Most of life is hell. It’s filed with failure and loss. People disappoint you. Dreams don’t work out. Hearts get broken. Innocent journalists die. And the best moments of life, when everything comes together, are few and fleeting. But you’ll never get to the next great moment if you don’t keep going. So that’s what I do. I keep going.
Sigourney WeaverRead
Life is like a box of chocolates.
Winston GroomRead
If you were to go, and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You'd see Jesus on the cross, and you'd see a dude get stabbed in the neck, and you'd see people dying at sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.
John GreenRead
I’ve been really fortunate in that I guess I was hired to do A Cook’s Tour, I was already a known quantity, meaning I had written a really obnoxious book and nobody expected me to be anyone that I wasn’t already.
Anthony BourdainRead
For it is the fate of a woman Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers Runnng through caverns of darkness.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowRead