Life & Wisdom Quote by Frank Howard Clark

A smile, in Frank Howard Clark's telling, is less a personal expression than a social contagion. The line is engineered to feel like a small scientific finding: "most" suggests observation, not preaching, while "started" makes emotion sound mechanical, almost ignitable. Clark isn't romanticizing happiness; he's pointing to how much of our inner weather is outsourced to the people around us.

The intent is quietly moral without sounding sanctimonious. By framing smiles as responses rather than spontaneous eruptions, he shifts responsibility from self-help inwardness to outward attention. You don't have to manufacture joy from scratch; you can borrow the spark. It's a democratic idea of warmth: anyone can begin the chain, and no one needs special charisma to do it.

The subtext has teeth. If "most" smiles come from "another smile", then plenty of our friendliness is reciprocal performance. We mirror to belong, to lower threat levels, to signal we're safe. Clark packages that social bargaining in a gentle aphorism, but you can feel the implied critique: we like to think our emotions are self-authored; they're often co-written.

Context matters: Clark worked in the early-to-mid 20th century aphoristic tradition, when writers distilled civic virtues into pocket-sized counsel. Read against modern loneliness discourse and algorithmic outrage, the line lands as both comfort and challenge. It's not asking you to be relentlessly cheerful; it's reminding you that mood is infrastructural. One small gesture can change the room's chemistry, and the room often changes you right back.