Quotes About Fulfillment

Why must a girl pay so dearly for her least escape, Lily muses as she contemplates the prospect of being bored all afternoon by Percy Grice, dull but undeniably rich, on the bare chance that he might ultimately do her the honor of boring her for life?

Yes - it was happiness she still wanted, and the glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no account. One by one she had detached herself from the baser possibilities , and she saw that nothing now remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation. The House of Mirth

A man doesn't know till he tries it how killing uncongenial work is, and how it destroys the power of doing what one's fit for, even if there's time for both.

Their long years together had shown him that it did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of ugly appetites.

I had written short stories that were thought worthy of preservation! Was it the same insignificant I that I had always known? Any one walking along the streets might go into any bookshop, and say: 'Please give me Edith Wharton's book'; and the clerk, without bursting into incredulous laughter, would produce it, and be paid for it, and the purchaser would walk home with it and read it, and talk of it, and pass it on to other people to read!

She was something he knew he had missed: the flower of life.

The people who take society as an escape from work are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes the thing worked for it distorts all the relations of life.

To keep a kind of republic of the spirit—that's what I call success.

His days were full and they were filled decently, he supposed it was all a man ought to ask. Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life.

Every drop of blood in Lily's veins invited her to happiness.

Even now, however, she was not always happy. She had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them.

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

And how can anyone give you happiness who hasn't got it himself?

Chi ama le idee non è destinato a morire di fame.

It was an observation they had made in her earliest youth—Undine never wanted anything long, but she wanted it "right off." And until she got it the house was uninhabitable.

It isn't that she's given me to you--it is that she's given you to yourself... Don't you see... that that's the gift you can't escape from, the debt you're pledged to acquit? Don't you see that you've never before been what she thought you, and that now, so wonderfully, she's made you into the man she loved? That's worth suffering for, worth dying for, to a woman--that's the gift she would have wished to give!

Workaholism is an addictive disorder in which work is the only thing that gives you a sense of inner fulfillment and self-worth.

It is the mynd, that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happie, rich or poore: For some, that hath abundance at his will, Hath not enough, but wants in greatest store

I've always associated reading and writing with sex.

That's the happiest moment. When it's all done. When we stop. When we can stop.

People can't have everything they want. You should know that; it's a rule; people can have some of the things they want, but they can't have everything.

All of my plays are about people missing the boat, closing down too young, coming to the end of their lives with regret at things not done, as opposed to things done. I find most people spend too much time living as if they're never going to die.

Yes … but was I happy? Did I sit there and did contentment bathe me in its warm light?

Do you like being a cop? I love it, when it doesn't suck, sir.