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
She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness about her.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a profound sense of inner conflict and existential fatigue in the search for meaning and fulfillment.
In this quote, Edith Wharton captures the essence of a person's struggle with existential fatigue and the sense of isolation that comes from feeling unfulfilled. As the character walks, she experiences a deep inner conflict characterized by a loss of sparkle and vitality, suggesting that the pursuit of meaning in life can lead to feelings of emptiness and a disconnection from oneself and the surrounding world. This poignant reflection highlights the human experience of seeking purpose while grappling with feelings of inadequacy and loneliness.
Themes
FatigueIsolationFailureSearchLifeMeaning
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about perseverance in the face of adversity.
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
Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, "just in case," in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.
Alexander HerzenRead
That is true culture which helps us to work for the social betterment of all.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover these precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read
It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before.
Bill BrysonRead
Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world. They were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being.
John ConnollyRead
Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street.
Woodrow WilsonRead