Quotes from Edith Wharton

S? emigreze! Parc? un gentleman ar putea s?-?i p?r?seasc? patria!

and my heart tightened for the hard compulsions of the poor.

You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense, but your lungs are thinking about the air if you are not. And so it is with your rich people: they may not be thinking of money, but they're breathing it all the while; take them into another element and see how they squirm and gasp!

The next two or three days dragged by heavily. The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.

She stared, perhaps suspecting irony, as she always did beneath the unintelligible.

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 shirt-fronts and fresh glacé gloves.

After all, what did he know of her life? Only as much as she had chosen to show him, and measured by the world's estimate, how little that was!

e ela concluiu que a vinda de Selden, se não provava que ele ainda estava envolvido com Mrs. Dorset, mostrava que ele estava completamente livre a ponto de não temer a proximidade dela.

It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them.

Their types were familiar enough to Ralph, who had taken their measure in former wanderings, and come across their duplicates in every scene of continental idleness.

Marry—but whom, in the name of light and freedom? The daughters of his own race sold themselves to the Invaders; the daughters of the Invaders bought their husbands as they bought an opera-box. It ought all to have been transacted on the Stock Exchange.

É como acontece na maioria dos espetáculos: o público pode até se iludir, mas os atores sabem que a vida real está além das luzes da ribalta.

leg?tura dintre soÈ› È™i soÈ›ie, chiar dac? se mai putea desface în epocile de prosperitate, era de nedezlegat în momentele de nenorocire.

He had no desire to marry at all—that had been the whole truth of it till he met Undine Spragg. And now—

As mulheres não são generosas quando o assunto é emprestar dinheiro e a maioria daquelas que a cercavam ou estavam na mesma situação ou não faziam a menor ideia das necessidades que ela passava.

Fericirea, la unele firi e ca o alunecare de teren pe munte.

The whole question hinged on Arthur's statement to his brother. Suppress that statement, and the claim vanished, and with it the scandal, the humiliation, the life-long burden of the woman and child dragging the name of Peyton through heaven knew what depths.

Ah, don't let us undo what you've done!' she cried. 'I can't go back now to that other way of thinking. I can't love you unless I give you up.

The tragedy of the woman's death, and of his own share in it, were as nothing in the disaster of his bright irreclaimableness.

Oh, there IS one, of course, but you'll never know it. The assertion, laughingly flung out six months earlier in a bright June garden, came back to Mary Boyne with a sharp perception of its latent significance as she stood, in the December dusk, waiting for the lamps to be brought into the library.

As long ago as Pythagoras, man was taught that all things were in a state of flux, without end as without beginning, and must we still, after more than two thousand years, pretend to regard the universe as some gigantic toy manufactured in six days by a Superhuman Artisan, who is presently to destroy it at his pleasure?

It seemed to her the diabolical instrument of their estrangement.

THE TOUCHSTONE

In exactly three minutes Mr. Peter Ascham, of the eminent legal firm of Ascham and Pettilow, would have his punctual hand on the door-bell of the flat.