Edith Wharton: Doing

“I swear I only want to hear about you, to know what you've been doing. It's a hundred years since we've met-it may be another hundred before we meet again.”

“Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair.”

“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 you're sick and when you're lonesome.”

“Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths?”

“Everything about her was warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose.”

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

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