Happiness Quote by Christina Rossetti

Rossetti’s line doesn’t plead for shallow cheerfulness; it issues a cool, almost austere instruction about how to survive feeling. “Better by far” lands like a moral verdict, the voice of someone who has weighed the options and decided that memory can be a kind of self-harm. The pairing is stark and economical: forget/smile versus remember/sad. No third way, no romantic middle ground where longing is noble. That compression is the trick. It forces you to confront how often we treat sadness as evidence of depth, as if grief keeps love honest.

The subtext is less “move on” than “stop performing fidelity to pain.” Rossetti, writing in a Victorian culture that prized feminine restraint and spiritual seriousness, understands how remembrance can become a socially sanctioned loop: you prove your character by carrying sorrow politely, indefinitely. Her speaker refuses that bargain. Forgetting here isn’t an insult to what happened; it’s a boundary. Smiling isn’t denial; it’s a chosen posture, a reclamation of the present from the tyranny of replay.

Context matters: Rossetti’s work frequently circles renunciation, devotion, and the costs of desire. She knew the beauty of melancholy and also its seduction. This line reads like someone interrupting their own elegiac instincts. It’s not anti-love; it’s anti-captive love. The sentence offers a radical permission slip: you can honor what was without letting it draft you into permanent sadness.