All Edith Wharton Quotes
- 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
- There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long… Daily
- She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin, dark hair, the way… Clothes
- ...In the summer New York was the only place in which one could escape from New Yorkers... Escape
- Ah, good conversation - there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing. Ah
- Archer reddened to the temples but dared not move or speak: it was as if her words had been some rare butterfly that the least… Archer
- They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything. Alike
- You thought I was a lovelorn mistress and I was really just an expensive prostitute. Expensive
- There was once a little girl who was so very intelligent that her parents feared that she would die. But an aged aunt, who had… Aged
- He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the… All
- Nothing is more perplexing to a man than the mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions. Emotion
- Their long years together had shown him that it did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept… Appetite
- ..but it seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, if breakable in prosperity, should be indissoluble in misfortune. Breakable
- She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making. Inspirational
- There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an… Beloved
- What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath. Arms
- She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to… Bracelet
- What a shame it is for a nation to be developing without a sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast. Bananas
- In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only… All
- We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we? Behave
- [B]ut he had lived in a world in which, as he said, no one who loved ideas need hunger mentally. B Ut
- Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair. April
- It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region. Any
- Staunch and faithful lovers that they are, they give back a hundred fold every sign of love that one ever gives them. Ever Gives
- I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was… Anywhere