Quotes from Edith Wharton

To step on board a steamer in a Spanish port, and three hours later to land in a country without a guide-book, is a sensation to rouse the hunger of the repletest sight-seer.

Courage is about the most useful thing in an artist's outfit.

He went on to praise the company they had just left, declaring that he knew no better way for a young man to form his mind than by frequenting the society of men of conflicting views and equal capacity. "Nothing," said he, "is more injurious to the growth of character than to be secluded from argument and opposition; as nothing is healthier than to be obliged to find good reasons for one's beliefs on pain of surrendering them.

It was in a tiny Venetian church, no more than a chapel, that Lewis Racie's eyes had been unsealed—in the dull-looking little church not even mentioned in the guidebooks.

But there was more than that: a sense of irrelevance, of littleness, of futile bravado, in sitting there puffing my cigarette-smoke into the face of such a past.

She was BAD . . . always. They used to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, said my mother, as if the scene of the offence added to the guilt of the couple whose past she was revealing.

Cuando un hombre amaba a una mujer ésta siempre tenía la edad que él quisiera; y cuando dejaba de amarla se convertía en demasiado vieja para los hechizos o en demasiado joven para la técnica .

is probable that, like the illustrious author of the drama, all were unconscious of any incongruity between their sentiments and actions.

What's the use of making mysteries? It only makes people want to nose 'em out.

It was his misfortune to be in love with his wife; and this state of mind (in itself sufficiently ridiculous) and the shifts and compromises to which it reduced him, were a source of endless amusement to the humorists.

No había motivo para tratar de emancipar a una esposa que no tenía la más remota noción de que no fuera libre; y ya hacía tiempo que había descubierto que el único uso de esa libertad que May suponía poseer sería dipositar dicha libertad en el altar de su adoración de esposa.

La añoranza lo acompañaba día y noche como un incesante e indefinible deseo, como el súbito antojo de un enfermo por comer o beber algo que alguna vez probó y había olvidado por mucho tiempo

The longed-for ships come empty home, founder on the deep And eyes first lose their tears and then their sleep.

Me diste el primer atisbo de una vida verdadera, y al mismo momento me pediste que siguiera con una vida ficticia

La diferencia es que estos jovencitos dan por sentado que van a conseguir cuanto se proponen, mientras que nosotros casi siempre dábamos por sentado que no debíamos conseguirlo. Aunque me pregunto si algo que uno está seguro de conseguir le haría latir tan locamente el corazón.

Jamás os pedíais nada el uno al otro, ¿verdad? Y nunca os contabais nada. Os sentabais, os mirabais y adivinabais lo que pasaba por dentro. ¡Un asilo de sordomudos, en definitiva!

Since the Americans have ceased to have dyspepsia," she reflected, "they have lost the only thing that gave them any expression.

Las mujeres deberían ser libres..., tan libres como nosotros —declaró, descubriendo algo cuyas terribles consecuencias estaba demasiado irritado para medir.

No debes pensar que una chica sabe tan poco como imaginan sus padres. Una oye, una se da cuenta..., una tiene sus propios sentimientos e ideas.

La verdadera soledad consiste en vivir entre toda esa gente encantadora que sólo te pide que finjas!

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. What Claydon read there—or at least such scattered

There's always a reason for wanting to get out of life—the wonder is that we find so many for staying in!

Every step she took seemed in fact to carry her farther from the region where, once or twice, he and she had met for an illumined moment and the recognition of this fact, when its first pang had been surmounted, produced in him a sense of negative relief.

He paused, conscious that he had failed in his attempt to speak with the indifference of a man who longs for a change, and is yet too weary to welcome it.