Edith Wharton Quotes
Most popular Edith Wharton Quotes
It is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.
My little old dog: A heart-beat at my feet.
Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.
True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.
One cares so little for the style in which one's praises are written.
Traditions that have lost their meaning are the hardest of all to destroy.
Life is always either a tight-rope or a featherbed. Give me the featherbed.
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
She wanted to get away from herself, and conversation was the only means of escape that she knew.
No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity.
Archer hung a moment on a thin thread of memory, but it snapped and floated off with the disappearing face.
Ah, good conversation—there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.
As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch.
When people ask for time, it's always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesn't take half as long to say.
In the dissolution of sentimental partnerships it is seldom that both associates are able to withdraw their funds at the same time.
There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul.
The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances at any subject cross like interarching searchlights.
An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.
Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet alone. To this end she had founded the Lunch Club, an association composed of herself and several other indomitable huntresses of erudition.
In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.
There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.
In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.
The first glance to see how many pages there are – the second to see how it ends & then the return to the beginning, the breathless first reading, the slow lingering over each phrase & each word, the taking possession, the absorbing of them one by one, & finally the choosing of the one that will be carried in one's thoughts all day.
