All Edith Wharton Quotes
- He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and… Carry
- I couldn't have spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in… Apart
- A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard).… Author
- It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them. Ceased
- Everything may be labelled- but everybody is not. Everybody
- I swear I only want to hear about you, to know what you've been doing. It's a hundred years since we've met-it may be another… Another Hundred
- But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained… Apart
- Yes, you have been away a very long time.' 'Oh, centuries and centuries; so long,' she said, 'that I'm sure I'm dead and buried and… Been
- We live in our own souls as in an unmapped region, a few acres of which we have cleared for our habitation; while of the… Acres
- And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead… Ancestresses
- The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your friends have… Able
- One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made… Any
- She would not have put herself out so much to say so little. Funny
- Her failure was a useful preliminary to success. Failure
- Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well-you did love me for a moment;… Always Helped
- He had known the love that is fed on caresses and feeds them; but this passion that was closer than his bones was not to… Bones
- And you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities. Beside
- Habit is necessary. It is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one… Alive
- But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes… Alone
- The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend! All
- The very good people did not convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you felt the world outside tugging… All
- A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys. Acquire
- With a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and… Association
- Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to… Archer
- She gave so many reasons that I've forgotten them all. All