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 was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the feeling of insignificance and loss of purpose when one feels disconnected from the larger systems of life.
Edith Wharton's quote expresses a deep sense of existential angst, as it portrays life as a great machine in which individuals play small, yet crucial, roles. When one feels they no longer fit or are needed within this machine, it can lead to feelings of lack of purpose and worth, highlighting how interconnected our roles and identities are within the broader societal framework.
In practice
In a speech about finding purpose in retirement, one might quote this to reflect on the importance of roles in life.
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.
The empire of Christ the King includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith: so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.
If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they'd realize that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose.
Thats how we survive infinity - we kill it by breaking it up into small bits.
People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.
Madness, mayhem, erotic vandalism, devastation of innumerable souls - while we scream and perish, History licks a finger and turns the page.
We did not domesticate wheat; wheat domesticated us.
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