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Smile quotes

Explore Smile quotations through time and change, attention and perspective, hope, loss, and renewal. Compare how different writers frame the idea across distinct works and periods.

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Four ways into this smile collection

Shortest in this collection“But the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong.” — Ella Wheeler WilcoxLongest in this collection“Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad.” — Christina Rossetti
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Source identified1
But the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong.
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“But the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox · Poems of Cheer · 1914
Meaning & context

The poem defines tested cheerfulness as the capacity to retain some steadiness when circumstances turn badly, rather than as pleasantness that exists only when life is easy.

Source details

Poems of Cheer, “Worth While,” represented 1914 Gay and Hancock edition; Project Gutenberg #3238. The line is poetic encouragement and does not imply that smiling is an adequate response to every form of suffering.

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Source identified2
Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad.
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“Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad.”

Christina Rossetti · Remember · 1862
Meaning & context

Love is expressed through releasing the other person from an obligation to grieve, placing their future well-being above continued remembrance.

Source details

Closing thought of Remember; Rossetti shifts from asking to be remembered toward permitting compassionate forgetting.

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Topic guide

A quick guide to smile

Life-oriented quotations range across time, change, hope, memory, nature, happiness, loss, and the ordinary decisions that gradually become a life.

Reading lenses

Time and changeAttention and perspectiveHope, loss, and renewalWhat makes ordinary life feel worthwhile

How to use this page

Compare lines that point toward different definitions of a good life. The most useful quotation is often the one that names a tradeoff clearly rather than the one that sounds universally uplifting.

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Authors and sources

Who speaks here, and which works are represented?

Voices in this collection

Christina Rossetti1 quotation in this topic
Ella Wheeler Wilcox1 quotation in this topic

Named sources

Poems of Cheer1914 · 1 quotation
Remember1862 · 1 quotation