“She was the subject creature, and versed in the arts of the enslaved.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
One of the first obligations of art is to make all useful things beautiful. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
In all the arts abundance seems to be one of the surest signs of vocation. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“You are an artist and I happen to be the bit of color you are using today.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry - architecture being the least banal derivative of the latter.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
Until the raw ingredients of a pudding make a pudding, I shall never believe that the raw material of sensation and thought… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“She sang, of course, "M'ama!" and not "he loves me," since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“Mr. Popple, in fact, held that the personality of the artist should at all times be dissembled behind that of the man.… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“Passion," the artist implied, would have been the dominant note of his life, had it not been held in check by a… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“To read is not a virtue; but to read well is an art, and an art that only the born reader can… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“Suddenly the air was full of that deep clangor of bells which periodically covers Rome with a roof of silver.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share
“Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself… — Edith Wharton Copy Share
“High Pasture Come up--come up: in the dim vale below The autumn mist muffles the fading trees, But on this keen hill-pasture, though the… — Edith Wharton Copy Share
“Two ways to be a light for all, is to be a flaming candle or the mirror that reflects it” — Edith Wharton Copy Share
“... no treasure-house of Atreus was ever as rich as a well-stored memory.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share
“...the endless labour of rolling human stupidity up the steep hill of understanding.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share
“he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together… — Edith Wharton Copy Share
The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend! — Edith Wharton Copy Share
With a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material… — Edith Wharton Copy Share
A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never… — Edith Wharton Copy Share
There is too much sour grapes for my taste in the present American attitude. The time to denounce the bankers was when we were… — Edith Wharton Copy Share
“But in a few years more perhaps there may be; for, deep within us as the ghost instinct lurks, I seem to see it… — Edith Wharton Copy Share
Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in… — Edith Wharton Copy Share
“These Americans, under their forthcoming manner, their surface-gush, as some might call it, have an odd reticence about what goes on underneath.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share
