Quotes from Edith Wharton

He started to walk across the Common, and on the first bench, under a tree, he saw her sitting. She had a gray silk sunshade over her head—how could he have ever imagined her with a pink one?

If May had spoken out her grievances (he suspected her of many) he might have laughed them away; but she was trained to conceal imaginary wounds under a Spartan smile

It was much simpler for him to judge Miss Bart by her habitual conduct than by the rare deviations from it which had thrown her so disturbingly in his way; and every act of hers which made the recurrence of such deviations more unlikely confirmed the sense of relief with which he returned to the conventional view of her.

What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a decent fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal.

Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by oneself? You're so shy, and yet you're so public. I always feel as if I were in the convent again--or on the stage before a dreadfully polite audience that never applauds.

Una de las mejores intuiciones del cochero de alquiler fue descubrir que los norteamericanos desean alejarse de sus diversiones aún con mayor prontitud que llegar a ellas.

Since then there has been no farther communication between them, and he had built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned among his secret thoughts and longings

You've put it in a nutshell: the ideal of the American woman is to be respectable without being bored; and from that point of view this world they've invented has more originality than I gave it credit for.

Nick had secretly wearied, if not of his wife, at least of the life that their marriage compelled him to lead. His passion was not strong enough-had never been strong enough—to outweigh his prejudices, scruples, principles, or whatever one chose to call them. Susy's dignity might go up like tinder in the blaze of her love; but his was made of a less combustible substance.

Pero, en primer lugar, Nueva York era una metrópolis perfectamente consciente de que en las grandes capitales no era bien visto llegar temprano a la ópera; y lo que era o no era bien visto jugaba un rol tan importante en la Nueva York de Newland Archer como los inescrutables y ancestrales seres terroríficos que habían dominado el destino de sus antepasados miles de años atrás.

seemed like that moment of pause and arrest when the warm fluidity of youth is chilled into its final shape. He

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 motion might drive off on startled wings, but that might gather a flock about it if it were left undisturbed

One may be strengthened & fed without the aid of Joy, & no one knows it better than I do; & I believe I know the only cure, which is to make one's center of life inside of one's self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity—to decorate one's inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone.

The blood that ran so close to her fair skin might have been a preserving fluid rather than a ravaging element; yet her look of indestructible youthfulness made her seem neither hard nor dull, but only primitive and pure.

There had been days and nights when the memory of their kiss had burned and burned on his lips; the day before even, on the drive to Portsmouth, the thought of her had run through him like fire; but now that she was beside him, and they were drifting fourth into this unknown world, they seemed to have reached the kind of deeper nearness that a touch may sunder

Such verbal generosities were in fact only a humbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things together and bound people down to the old pattern.

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

In this interpretative light Mrs. Grancy acquired the charm which makes some women's faces like a book of which the last page is never turned. There was always something new to read in her eyes.

You've arranged it delightfully,' he rejoined, alive to the flatness of the words, but imprisoned in the conventional by his consuming desire to be simple and striking

And within a year of their marriage she developed the "sickliness" which had since made her notable even in a community rich in pathological instances. When she came to take care of his mother she had seemed to Ethan like the very genius of health, but he soon saw that her skill as a nurse had been acquired by the absorbed observation of her own symptoms.

Andrew Hale was a ruddy man with a big gray moustache and a stubbly double-chin unconstrained by a collar; but his scrupulously clean shirt was always fastened by a small diamond stud. This display of opulence was misleading, for though he did a fairly good business it was known that his easygoing habits and the demands of his large family frequently kept him what Starkfield called behind.

The instinctive posture of grief is a shuffling compromise between defiance and prostration; and pride feels the need of striking a worthier attitude in face of such a foe.

Hale sat with his feet up on the stove, his back propped against a battered desk strewn with papers: the place, like the man, was warm, genial and untidy.

the stoic's carelessness of material things, combined with the epicurean's pleasure in them.