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Edith Wharton: 206 quotes6 likes

“I can't love you unless I give you up.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence (1920), Ch. 18

“Yes, the Gorgon has dried your tears.'
Well, she has opened my eyes too; it's a delusion to say she blinds people. What she does is the contrary-she fastens their eyelids open, so they're never again in the blessed darkness.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence (1920), Ch. 33

“Archer reddened to the temples but dared not move or speak: it was as if her words had been some rare butterfly that the least motion might drive off on startled wings, but that might gather a flock if it were left undisturbed.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“They belonged to that vast group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

“There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“And all the while, I suppose," he thought, "real people were living somewhere, and real things happening to them…”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“Poetry and art are the breath of life to her.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“The only way to not think about money is to have a great deal of it."

You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

“Don't they always go from bad to worse? There's no turning back--your
old self rejects you, and shuts you out. ~Lilly Bart”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

“Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“Then stay with me a little longer,' Madame Olenska said in a low tone, just touching his knee with her plumed fan. It was the lightest touch, but it thrilled him like a caress.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.”

Edith Wharton

“Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury. It was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

“No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: "The House of Mirth" http://books.google.com/books?id=plFdLlYHwZ8C&pg=PA69&lpg=PA69&dq=No+insect+hangs+its+nest+on+threads+as+frail+as+those+which+will+sustain+the+weight+of+human+vanity.&source=bl&ots=j0EPPhjIZW&sig=MQMjyNy5yKK97Ok4bGqRWfC3obE&hl=en&ei=T5F0TMqyMIuisAOczpyMBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=No%20insect%20hangs%20its%20nest%20on%20threads%20as%20frail%20as%20those%20which%20will%20sustain%20the%20weight%20of%20human%20vanity.&f=false (1905), ch. X, pg. 69

“Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying for their board.”

Edith Wharton

Source: Xingu and other Stories

“How I hate everything!”

Edith Wharton Summer

Source: Summer

“She had taken everything else from him, and now she meant to take the one thing that made up for it all.”

Edith Wharton book Ethan Frome

Source: Ethan Frome