Quotes by Edith Wharton

It was horrible of a young girl to let herself be talked about; however unfounded the charges against her, she must be to blame for their having been made.

Ah, dont let us undo what youve done! she cried. I cant go back now to that other way of thinking. I cant love you unless I give you up.

I want to put my hand out and touch you. I want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when youre sick and when youre lonesome.

Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience...

...though she had not had the strength to shake off the spell that bound her to him she had lost all spontaneity of feeling, and seemed to herself to be passively awaiting a fate she could not avert.

The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the centre of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation. A flight of smooth double chins led down to the dizzy depths of a still-snowy bosom veiled in snowy muslins that were held in place by a miniature portrait of the late Mr. Mingott; and around and below, wave after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the surface of the billows.

What she craved and really felt herself entitled to was a situation in which the noblest attitude should also be the easiest.

The Hazeldean heart was a proverbial boast in the family; the Hazeldeans privately considered it more distinguished than the Sillerton gout, and far more refined than the Wesson liver; and it had permitted most of them to survive, in valetudinarian ease, to a ripe old age, when they died of some quite other disorder. But Charles Hazeldean had defied it, and it took its revenge, and took it savagely.

There are two ways of spreading light: to be The candle or the mirror that reflects it.

She seemed always to have seen him through a blur - first of sleepiness, then of distance and indifference - and now the fog had thickened till he was almost indistinguishable.

Believe me, all of you, the best way to help the places we live in is to be glad we live there.

...how much did pride count in the ebullition of passions in his breast?

I went on steadily trying to find out how to; but I wrote two or three novels without feeling that I had made much progress. It was not until I wrote Ethan Frome that I suddenly felt the artisans full control of his implements. When Ethan Frome first appeared I was severely criticized by the reviewers for what was considered the clumsy structure of the tale. I had pondered long on this structure, had felt its peculiar difficulties, and possible awkwardness, but could think of no alternative which would serve as well in the given case: and though I am far from thinking Ethan Frome my best novel, and am bored and even exasperated when I am told that it is, I am still sure that its structure is not its weak point.

You see, Monsieur, its worth everything, isnt it, to keep ones intellectual liberty, not to enslave onespowers of appreciation, ones critical independence? It was because of that that I abandoned journalism, andtook to so much duller work: tutoring and private secretaryship. There is a good deal of drudgery, of course;but one preserves ones moral freedom, what we call in French ones quant a soi. And when one hears goodtalk one can join in it without compromising any opinions but ones own; or one can listen, and answer itinwardly. Ah, good conversation--theres nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worthbreathing. And so I have never regretted giving up either diplomacy or journalism--two different forms of thesame self-abdication. He fixed his vivid eyes on Archer as he lit another cigarette. Voyez-vous, Monsieur,to be able to look life in the face: thats worth living in a garret for, isnt it? But, after all, one must earnenough to pay for the garret; and I confess that to grow old as a private tutor--or a `private anything--is almostas chilling to the imagination as a second secretaryship at Bucharest. Sometimes I feel I must make a plunge:an immense plunge. Do you suppose, for instance, there would be any opening for me in America-- in NewYork?

It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country.

Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene as a part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have surprised them to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the lights among the boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky. The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in it together.

Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by ones self?

So close to the powers of evil she must have lived that she still breathed more freely in their air.

She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because once, when she asked you to, youd given up the thing you most wanted. Archer received this strange communication in silence. His eyes remained unseeingly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below the window. At length he said in a low voice: She never asked me.

Sometimes life seems like a match between oneself and ones gaolors. The gaolers, of course, are ones mistakes; and the question is, wholl hold out longest? When I think of that, life instead of being too long, seems as short as a winter day....