In every heart there should be one grief that is like a well in the desert. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
Blessed are the pure in heart for they have so many more things to talk about. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
She was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“Her entrances were always triumphs; but they had no sequel. As soon as people began to talk they ceased to see her.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“What she craved and really felt herself entitled to was a situation in which the noblest attitude should also be the easiest.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“the things that she took for granted gave the measure of those she had rebelled against.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury. It was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“She had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“She had taken everything else from him, and now she meant to take the one thing that made up for it all.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“Lizzy Elmsworth was not a good-tempered girl, but she was too intelligent to let her temper interfere with her opportunities.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“Undine was fiercely independent and yet passionately imitative. She wanted to surprise every one by her dash and originality, but she could… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“She has been better educated than her sister, and has a more receptive mind. It seems as though someone had sown in… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
The difference is that these young people take it for granted that they're going to get whatever they want, and that we… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“It was difficult to define her beyond saying that she seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so much from any… — 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
“There was money enough... but she asked so much of life, in ways so complex and immaterial. He thought of her as… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“During the interval between her divorce and her remarriage she had learned what things cost, but not how to do without them;… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“She yearned to be admired, and feared to be insulted; and yet seemed tragically conscious that she was destined to miss both… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“But she could not breathe long on the heights; there had been nothing in her training to develop any continuity of moral… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“As she lay there she said to herself that there was something she must tell Selden, some word she had found that… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“She had given him all she had - but what was it compared to the other gifts life held for him? She… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“Undine was fiercely independent and yet passionately imitative. She wanted to surprise every one by her dash and originality, but she could… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“Xingu!" she scoffed. "Why, it was the fact of our knowing so much more about it than she did—unprepared though we were—that… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“It was characteristic of her that she remembered her failures as keenly as her triumphs, and that the passionate desire to obliterate,… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin, dark… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“But hitherto she had been like some young captive brought up in a windowless palace whose painted walls she takes for the… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“She wanted to surprise everyone by her dash and originality, but she could not help modeling herself on the last person she… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“She herself had grown up without any one spot of earth being dearer than another: there was no center of earth pieties,… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“She knew that Virginia's survey of the world was limited to people, the clothes they wore, and the carriages they drove in.… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“Charity, till then, had been conscious only of a vague self-disgust and a frightening physical distress; now, of a sudden, there came… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“She had found out that she had given herself to the exclusive and the dowdy when the future belonged to the showy… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
...though she had not had the strength to shake off the spell that bound her to him she had lost all spontaneity… — 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
