Time & Perspective Quote by Ring Lardner

A lesser writer would have reached for a kiss. Lardner goes for a smile, then rigs it to carry plot. "A smile with a future in it" is a compact magic trick: the gesture is small, almost disposable, but the sentence insists it’s an investment. That’s the intent - to show how people turn ordinary signals into destiny, and how romance often runs on projection as much as feeling.

The phrasing is doing sly work. "They gave each other" makes it transactional, like a mutual exchange of tiny currency. Not passion, not confession - a socially acceptable token that can still be read as intimate. Then "with a future in it" smuggles time into a facial expression, treating a smile like a container you can pack with hope, plans, maybe even an entire relationship. It’s funny because it’s absurdly literal; it’s poignant because it’s exactly how infatuation operates. Two people glance at each other and suddenly they’re casting themselves in a long-term story.

Lardner, a comedian with a reporter’s ear for how Americans talk themselves into trouble, is also puncturing the melodrama of courtship. The line acknowledges the human need to believe we can spot meaning early, to treat chemistry as evidence. Subtext: they’re not just smiling - they’re agreeing, in the most deniable way possible, to collaborate on an imagined life. Whether that future is real or just wishful thinking is left hanging, which is where the sting lives.