“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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity." by Edith Wharton?
Edith Wharton photo
Edith Wharton103
American novelist, short story writer, designer 1862–1937

Related quotes

Bashō Matsuo photo

“Winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Alas!
We give our destiny from our own hands,
And trust to those most frail of all frail things,
The chances of humanity.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

A Summer Evening’s Tale
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Samuel Rutherford photo

“I hang by a thread, but it is (if I may so speak) of Christ's spinning”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Letter 56 to Lady Kenmure
Letters of Samuel Rutherford (Andrew Bonar)

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo

“(…) This must be well grasped; the world hangs on the thread of consciousness, no consciousness, no world.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Awareness and consciousness
Source: "I am That."

Robert Silverberg photo

“How frail, he thought, is the compact that holds our government together! Good will alone is all that sustains it.”

Robert Silverberg book Lord Valentine's Castle

Book 5, Chapter 6 (p. 442)
Lord Valentine's Castle (1980)

“"Fear is a hammer, and when the people are beaten finally to the conviction that their existence hangs by a frayed thread, they will be led where they need to go."
"Which is where?"
"To a responsible future in a properly managed world."”

Dean Koontz book The Good Guy

Conversation between Wentworth and Timothy Carrier
Chapter 63, p. 368
The Good Guy (2007)

Sitting Bull photo

“I hardly sustain myself beneath the weight of white men's blood that I have shed.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

Recorded by the Jesuit priest Pierre-Jean De Smet after a council with Sitting Bull on June 19, 1868. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 79-80.
Context: I hardly sustain myself beneath the weight of white men's blood that I have shed. The whites provoked the war; their injustices, their indignities to our families, the cruel, unheard of and wholly unprovoked massacre at Fort Lyon … shook all the veins which bind and support me. I rose, tomahawk in hand, and I have done all the hurt to the whites that I could.

Sylvia Plath photo

“How frail the human heart must be —
a mirrored pool of thought.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: "I Thought I Could Not Be Hurt," quoted in the introduction to Letters Home: Correspondence 1950–1963 (1975) as Plath's first poem, written at age 14

Related topics