Quotes from Edith Wharton

Her head bent back, she took his kiss, and then drew apart. The sparkle in his eyes she understood to be as much an invitation to her bloom as a tribute to her sagacity.

No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity, and the sense of being of importance among the insignificant was enough to restore to Miss Bart the gratifying consciousness of power.

I don't suppose, dear, you're really defending the French Sunday?

Undine Spragg—how can you? her mother wailed, raising a prematurely-wrinkled hand heavy with rings to defend the note which a languid bell-boy had just brought in.

Sir Helmsley lo accusava di sottoporsi al lavoro solo per amore dell'avventura; ma, benché addolorato per la decisione presa dal figlio, lo rispettava per avervi tenuto fede. «Io stesso sono stato tutto un brillante fallimento», aveva borbottato alla fine della loro discussione; e Guy di rimando, ridendo: «Allora cercherò di essere un tetro successo».

Beaufort was vulgar, he was uneducated, he was purse-proud; but the circumstances of his life, and a certain native shrewdness, made him better worth talking to than many men, morally and socially his betters, whose horizon was bounded by the Battery and the Central Park.

You might as well tell me there was nobody but Adam in the garden when Eve picked the apple. You say your wife was discontented? No woman ever knows she's discontented till some man tells her so. My God! I've seen smash-ups before now; but I never yet saw a marriage dissolved like a business partnership.

Does anything ever happen in heaven?' - Ellen Olenska

But least is he who, with enchanted eyes Filled with high visions of fair shapes to be, Muses which god he shall immortalize In the proud Parian's perpetuity, Till twilight warns him from the punctual skies That the night cometh wherein none shall see.

by some obscure process of logic, she felt that her momentary burst of generosity had justified all previous extravagances, and excused any in which she might subsequently indulge.

During the interval between her divorce and her remarriage she had learned what things cost, but not how to do without them; and money still seemed to her like some mysterious and uncertain stream which occasionally vanished underground but was sure to bubble up again at one's feet.

I don't say it wasn't straight, and yet I don't say it was straight. It was business.

The one thing that astonished him now was that he should have stood for five minutes arguing with her across the width of the room, when just touching her made everything so simple.

Couples were already gliding over the floor beyond: the light of the wax candles fell on revolving tulle skirts, on girlish heads wreathed with modest blossoms, on the dashing aigrettes and ornaments of the young married women's coiffures, and on the glitter of highly glazed shift-fronts and fresh glacé gloves.

el matrimonio no era un anclaje en puerto seguro, como le habían enseñado, sino un viaje por mares que no figuran en los mapas.

having refused to sacrifice herself to expediency, she was left to bear the whole cost of her resistance.

Polish Count must have robbed her of her fortune as well as of her illusions.

Ethan knew the word for one of exceptional import. Almost everybody in the neighbourhood had "troubles," frankly localized and specified; but only the chosen had "complications." To have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death-warrant. People struggled on for years with "troubles," but they almost always succumbed to "complications.

he understood that her courage and initiative were all for others, and that she had none for herself. It was evident that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied composure betrayed, and that at his first word of reassurance she had dropped back into the usual, as a too-adventurous child takes refuge in its mother's arms.

Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions above a choice of occupations; now she had to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in which moments of seeming brilliancy and freedom alternated with long hours of subjection.

It was as if the eager current of her being had been checked by a sudden obstacle which drove it back upon itself. She looked at him helplessly, like a hurt or frightened child: this real self of hers, which he had the faculty of drawing out of the depths, was so little accustomed to go alone!

marriage was not the safe anchorage he had been taught to think, but a voyage on uncharted seas.

You like so much to be alone?" "Yes; as long as my friends keep me from feeling lonely.

Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.