Edith Wharton: Trending quotes (page 5)

Nadine Gordimer, "The Essential Gesture: Writers and Responsibility" http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/gordimer85.pdf, The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, University of Michigan (12 October 1984), p. 9
Misattributed

Art , Thinking , Freedom

“There's no such thing as old age; there is only sorrow.”

Edith Wharton

"A First Word"
A Backward Glance http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200271.txt (1934)

Age

“Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone.”

Edith Wharton

"Xingu" http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/wharton/books/xingu.htm (1911), from Xingu and Other Stories (1916)

“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.”

Edith Wharton

The Children http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks04/0400741.txt (1928), ch. XXV

People , Time

“In the rotation of crops there was a recognized season for wild oats; but they were not sown more than once.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence (1920), Ch. 31

Season

“True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.”

Edith Wharton

The Writing of Fiction (1925), ch. I

“It was part of her discernment to be aware that life is the only real counselor, that wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissues.”

Edith Wharton

Sanctuary http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/wharton/books/snctr10.txt, (1903) part II, ch. IV

Life , Wisdom , Parting , Personality

“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?”

Edith Wharton

Letter to Barrett Wendell (19 July 1919)

Thinking , Country

“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.”

Edith Wharton

Source: A Backward Glance http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200271.txt (1934), Ch. 3

Children , Books , Reading

“Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.”

Edith Wharton

The Writing of Fiction (1925), ch. I

Art

“Habit is necessary; 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.”

Edith Wharton

"A First Word"
A Backward Glance http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200271.txt (1934)

“The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence (1920), Ch. 34

“To James's intimates, however, these elaborate hesitancies, far from being an obstacle, were like a cobweb bridge flung from his mind to theirs, an invisible passage over which one knew that silver-footed ironies, veiled jokes, tiptoe malices, were stealing to explode a huge laugh at one's feet.”

Edith Wharton

Source: A Backward Glance http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200271.txt (1934), Ch. 8

“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.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

"The House of Mirth" http://www.readprint.com/chapter-10542/The-House-of-Mirth-Edith-Wharton (1905), bk. 1, ch. 6

Beauty , Change

“After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them & invent others that (one is fairly sure) don't exist — or exist in a less measure.”

Edith Wharton

Letter to Robert Grant (19 November 1907)