“But we're so different, you know: she likes being good and I like being happy.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
I feel as if I could trust my happiness to carry me; as if it had grown out of me like wings. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
Think what stupid things the people must have done with their money who say they're 'happier without'. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
In our hurried world too little value is attached to the part of the connoisseur and dilettante. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
It was too late for happiness - but not too late to be helped by the thought of what I had missed.… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“Yes - it was happiness she still wanted, and the glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no account.… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
The very good people didn't convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had felt the… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
What is one's personality, detached from that of the friends with whom fate happens to have linked one? I cannot think of… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
The very good people did not convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you felt the… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“Poor May!" he said. "Poor? Why poor?" she echoed with a strained laugh. "Because I shall never be able to open a… — 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
