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
Her vivid smile was like a light held up to dazzle me.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses the power of someone's smile to bring joy and brightness into another's life.
In this quote, Edith Wharton describes a smile as a source of illumination, suggesting that a person's joy or happiness can profoundly affect those around them. The vividness of the smile symbolizes brilliance and warmth, conveying how it can captivate and inspire admiration, much like a dazzling light that brightens a dark space.
Themes
SmileLightJoyLoveBrightness
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of positivity, one might say, 'As Edith Wharton described, her vivid smile was like a light held up to dazzle me.'
More from Edith Wharton
All quotes βThey 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 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
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
People often ask me why don't you have a girlfriend. Then I smile and say: I have thousands some just haven't met me yet
Harry StylesRead
Nilda is watching the ground as though she's afraid she might fall. My heart is beating and I think, We could do anything. We could marry. We could drive off to the West Coast. We could start over. It's all possible but neither of us speaks for a long time and the moment closes and we're back in the world we've always known.
Junot DiazRead
Witch, do this for me, Find me a moon made of longing. Then cut it sliver thin, and having cut it, hang it high above my beloved's house, so that she may look up tonight and see it, and seeing it, sigh for me as I sigh for her, moon or no moon.
Clive BarkerRead
She missed him the days when some pretext served to take him away from her, just as one misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun when it was shining.
Kate ChopinRead
And as we stray further from love, we multiply the words. Had we remained together we could have become a silence.
Yehuda AmichaiRead
Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.
Ernest HemingwayRead