Edith Wharton Quotes
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Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
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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.
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A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue.
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My little dog - a heartbeat at my feet.
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Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
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There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny.
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To be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it?
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Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.
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How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be 'American' before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?
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I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views.
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I was never allowed to read the popular American children's books of my day because, as my mother said, the children spoke bad English without the author's knowing it.
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No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity.
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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.
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I can't love you unless I give you up.
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I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.
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Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone.
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He had come on her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. That is how she looks when she is alone! had been his first thought; and the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced.