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 if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the value of having a partner who brings excitement and depth to life rather than simply making it convenient.
Edith Wharton's quote suggests that a meaningful relationship goes beyond mere comfort and ease; it highlights the importance of having a partner who challenges and enriches one's life experiences. Rather than settling for someone who simply simplifies life, the speaker expresses a desire for a companion who adds complexity and intrigue, fostering growth and excitement in both life and love.
In practice
During a wedding speech to emphasize the importance of adventure in love.
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.
I am a man of passions, capable of and subject to doing more or less foolish things- which I happen to regret, more or less, afterwards.
you have to love life to have life, and you need to have life to love life
Somebody asked what I wanted on my gravestone. I'm just going to put: 'Glad I Could Help.'
I didn't appreciate how special and sometimes strange my CIA world was - until it suddenly and spectacularly ended in a newspaper column.
When something enters your life that is so big and so non-negotiable as catastrophic illness, you either go in denial for a while or ultimately you accept it and you make space for it. And in making space for it, you illuminate a lot of things that you normally don't have room for you simply just look at the world differently.
The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled.
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