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
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Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood.
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If I acknowledge my dependency, I do so because for me it is a means of signifying my demand: in the realm of love, futility is not a "weakness" or an "absurdity": it is a strong sign: the more futile, the more it signifies and the more it asserts itself as strength.)
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After all the dangerous adventures I'd had, I couldn't die like this. Sadie would be devastated. Then, once she got over her grief, she'd track down my soul in the Egyptian afterlife and tease me mercilessly for how stupid I'd been.
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Their happiness was in each others keeping, and both were unafraid.
Lucy Maud MontgomeryRead