Quotes from Edith Wharton

And as he had seen her that day, so she had remained; never quite the same height, yet never below it: generous, faithful, unwearied; but so lacking in imagination, so incapable of growth, that the world of her youth had fallen into pieces and rebuilt itself without her ever being conscious of the change.

Her incapacity to recognize change made her children conceal their views from her as Archer concealed his; there had been, from the first, a joint pretense of sameness, a kind of innocent family hypocrisy, in which father and children had unconsciously collaborated. And she died thinking the world a good place, full of loving and harmonious households like her own.

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 this dear old place is heaven;

At least, she continued, it was you who made me understand that under the dullness there are things so fine and sensitive and delicate that even those I most cared for in my other life look cheap in comparison. I don't know how to explain myself -- she drew together her troubled brows -- but it seems as if I'd never before understood with how much that is hard and shabby and base the most exquisite pleasures may be paid for.

he was the kind of man who brings a sour mouth to the eating of the sweetest apple.

This new resolve gave her a sort of light-headed self-confidence: when she left the dinner-table she felt so easy and careless that she was surprised to see that the glass of champagne beside her plate was untouched. She felt as if all its sparkles were whirling through her.

The inexorable facts closed in on him like prison-warders handcuffing a convict. There was no way out—none. He was a prisoner for life, and now his one ray of light was to be extinguished.

It is only because I am tired and have such odious things to think about," she kept repeating; and it seemed an added injustice that petty cares should leave a trace on the beauty which was her only defence against them. But

Don't let us be like all the others! she protested.

The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is truth?

name's Regina Dallas,' I said, 'It was Beaufort when he covered you with jewels, and it's got to stay Beaufort now that he's covered you with shame.' '' So

I am horribly poor—and very expensive. I must have a great deal of money.

But the long hours of mechanical drudgery were telling on his active body and undisciplined nerves. He had begun too late to subject himself to the persistent mortification of spirit and flesh which is a condition of the average business life; and after the long dull days in the office the evenings at his grandfather's whist-table did not give him the counter-stimulus he needed.

But I am born happy every morning

He did not mind being flippant about New York, but disliked to hear any one else take the same tone.

Everything about her was warm and soft and scented: even the stains of her grief became her as rain-drops do the beaten rose.

the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other's angles, he reflected; but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep.

Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths.

If the ability to read carries the average man no higher than the gossip of his neighbours, if he asks nothing more nourishing out of books and the theatre than he gets hanging about the store, the bar and the street-corner, then culture is bound to be dragged down to him instead of his being lifted up by culture.

cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the new people whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung to it for its historic associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music.

and I know how names can alter the colour of beliefs.

the only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.

I'm improvident: I live in the moment when I'm happy

I hate in-the-end kindnesses: they're about as nourishing as the third day of cold mutton.