2 quotations linked to Poems of Cheer by or associated with Ella Wheeler Wilcox, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Optimism, resilience, perspective, hope, love, sorrow and attempts to preserve constructive attention amid difficulty.
Use these links when you want to inspect the wording in its wider work or edition.
“It’s better by far to hunt for a star, than the spots on the sun abiding.”
Wilcox contrasts constructive attention with habitual fault-finding, recommending a perspective that actively looks for what remains promising without claiming flaws do not exist.
Source note: Poems of Cheer, “As You Go Through Life,” represented 1914 edition; Project Gutenberg #3238. The poem explicitly acknowledges that things go wrong, so the line is about chosen attention rather than denial.
“But the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong.”
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 note: 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.