A baseball bat could not have hit me harder than that smile did. I was sixteen years old. In that time, how many thousands of smiles had been aimed at me? so why did this one feel like the first?
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the profound impact that a single genuine smile can have on a person, often more than any physical blow.
In this quote, Jerry Spinelli reflects on the overwhelming emotional effect of a smile received at a young age. The narrator conveys that despite receiving many smiles throughout their life, this particular one felt uniquely significant, suggesting that human connection and affection can leave a lasting impression on our hearts, often surpassing physical experiences.
In practice
Using this quote in a motivational speech about the power of kindness and connection.
I listen to the summer symphony outside my window. Truthfully, it's not a symphony at all. There's no tune, no melody, only the same notes over and over. Chirps and tweets and trills and burples. It's as if the insect orchestra is forever tuning its instruments, forever waiting for the maestro to tap his baton and bring them to order. I, for one, hope the maestro never comes. I love the music mess of it.
She dreams a lot. She dreams of Ondines and falling maidens and houses burning in the night. But search her dreams all you like and you'll never find Prince Charming. No knight on a white horse gallops into her dreams to carry her away. When she dreams of love, she dreams of smashed potatoes.
A mockingbird has moved into our neighborhood. It perches atop a telephone pole behind our backyard. Every morning it is the first thing I hear. It is impossible to be unhappy when listening to a mockingbird. So stuffed with songs it is, it can't seem to make up it's mind which to sing first, so it sings them all, a dozen different songs at once, in a dozen different voices. On and on it sings without a pause, so peppy, even frantic, as if its voice alone is keeping the world awake.
Because that's what you do, you stand up for your best friend. And you eat lunch with him and talk with him and share secrets and laugh a lot and go places and do stuff, and when you wake up in the morning, he's the first person you think of.
No one's hurt is too small, no worry too removed, no blessing so elusive that it cannot be seen by the eyes in the back of the human heart.
She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music. She had no friends, yet she was the friendliest person in school.
The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us. And to save us.
Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.
Ye may have a greater prince, but ye shall never have a more loving prince.
Their love was a bright flower, youthful and radiantly beautiful.
There's no race, no religion, no class system, no color - nothing - no sexual orientation, that makes us better than anyone else. We're all deserving of love.
'It is love and reason,' I said, 'fleeing from all this madness of war.'
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