Edith Wharton

“Suddenly the air was full of that deep clangor of bells which periodically covers Rome with a roof of silver.”

— Edith Wharton

“Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive guile. And he…

— Edith Wharton

“High Pasture Come up--come up: in the dim vale below The autumn mist muffles the fading trees, But on this keen hill-pasture,…

— Edith Wharton

“Two ways to be a light for all, is to be a flaming candle or the mirror that reflects it”

— Edith Wharton

“... no treasure-house of Atreus was ever as rich as a well-stored memory.”

— Edith Wharton

“...the endless labour of rolling human stupidity up the steep hill of understanding.”

— Edith Wharton

“he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests…

— Edith Wharton

The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!

— Edith Wharton

With a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association…

— Edith Wharton

Life is the saddest thing there is, next to death.

— Edith Wharton

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite…

— Edith Wharton

There is too much sour grapes for my taste in the present American attitude. The time to denounce the bankers was when…

— Edith Wharton

“But in a few years more perhaps there may be; for, deep within us as the ghost instinct lurks, I seem to…

— Edith Wharton

Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative…

— Edith Wharton

“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

“The allegation that English girls had no conversation must be true; but theirs was a SPEAKING silence. Their eyes and smiles were…

— Edith Wharton

When a man says he doesn't understand a woman it's because he won't take the trouble.

— Edith Wharton

“Now his imagination spun about the hand as about the edge of a vortex; but still he made no effort to draw…

— Edith Wharton

In all the arts abundance seems to be one of the surest signs of vocation.

— Edith Wharton

“It was difficult to define her beyond saying that she seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so much from any…

— Edith Wharton

Archer was too intelligent to think that a young woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that reminded her of…

— Edith Wharton

“Archer looked down with wonder at the familiar spectacle. It surprised him that life should be going on in the old way…

— Edith Wharton

Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well-you did love me…

— Edith Wharton

“She is still a bundle of engaging possibilities rather than a finished picture. Of the mother there is nothing to say, for…

— Edith Wharton

The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

— Edith Wharton