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
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
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
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
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
I believe I know the only cure, which is to make one’s center of life inside of one’s self, not selfishly or… — 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
I'm afraid I'm an incorrigible life-lover, life-wonderer, and adventurer. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
Life has a way of overgrowing its achievements as well as its ruins. — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
Life is always either; a tight -rope or a feather-bed . — Give me the tightrope. — 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
“As soon as he heard of the Sillerton’s party he had said to himself that the Marchioness Manson would certainly come to… — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
To be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it? — 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
“Life is always either a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.” — 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
Little as she was addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from the empty… — 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
“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
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
There was once a little girl who was so very intelligent that her parents feared that she would die. But an aged… — 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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“Two ways to be a light for all, is to be a flaming candle or the mirror that reflects it” — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“... no treasure-house of Atreus was ever as rich as a well-stored memory.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“...the endless labour of rolling human stupidity up the steep hill of understanding.” — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
“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 Image
The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend! — Edith Wharton Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
