Edith Wharton: Being

“Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?”

“The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.”

“The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your friends have lost.”

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

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”