“His days were full and they were filled decently, he supposed it was all a man ought to ask. Something he knew… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
... how I understand that love of living, of being in this wonderful, astounding world even if one can look at it… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“The youngest, dumpiest, dullest of the four dull and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van Osburgh, with unsurpassed astuteness, had "placed" one by… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
For what endless years this life will have to go on! He felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“The things that had filled his days seemed now like a nursery parody of life, or like the wrangles of medieval schoolmen… — 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
Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
They belonged to that vast group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single one of the… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“I want - I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words like that -categories like that- won't… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“It was the old New York way of taking life “without effusion of blood”: the way of people who dreaded scandal more… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“I have tried hard - but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to… — 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
Damn words; they're just the pots and pans of life, the pails and scrubbing-brushes. I wish I didn't have to think in… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
I have drunk of the wine of life at last, I have known the thing best worth knowing, I have been warmed… — 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 was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“The people who take society as an escape from work are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes the… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“She made no answer, and he went on: “What’s the use? You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“Sometimes life seems like a match between oneself and one's gaolors. The gaolers, of course, are one's mistakes; and the question is,… — 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
