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e56c382
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Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
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daytime
day
window
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Edith Wharton |
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0c1de3f
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My little old dog
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Edith Wharton |
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42fa93c
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Each time you happen to me all over again.
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love
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Edith Wharton |
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84edf3a
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There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.
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Edith Wharton |
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b4000aa
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The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!
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loneliness
kindness
friends
family
insincerity
pretense
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Edith Wharton |
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cc63372
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Ah, good conversation - there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.
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Edith Wharton |
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643fc45
|
We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?
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Edith Wharton |
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d2d6fdb
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She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.
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Edith Wharton |
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6487609
|
In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.
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Edith Wharton |
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cd3a4ea
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Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well-you did love me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me.
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Edith Wharton |
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9d1b4a3
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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.
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Edith Wharton |
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bdff571
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She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.
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Edith Wharton |
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7a35e11
|
She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you most wanted." Archer received this strange communication in silence. His eyes remained unseeingly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below the window. At length he said in a low voice: "She never asked me."
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Edith Wharton |
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11fbff2
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I couldn't have spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great flame. But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered, and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now and then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit perfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in my mind, just quietly tru..
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Edith Wharton |
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d02b4d9
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The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances on any subject cross like interarching searchlights.
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Edith Wharton |
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2d02b23
|
His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen.
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Edith Wharton |
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fe9bbbd
|
Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.
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Edith Wharton |
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6461330
|
But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well been half the world apart.
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Edith Wharton |
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3fcb89e
|
And you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities.
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Edith Wharton |
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5e53f1d
|
She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin, dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his clothes--she was conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven with her deepest life.
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Edith Wharton |
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fa7f36a
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I want - I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words like that -categories like that- won't exist. Where we shall be simply two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each other; and nothing else on earth will matter.
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Edith Wharton |
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9dccba0
|
Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?"
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money
rich
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Edith Wharton |
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7581445
|
He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.
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Edith Wharton |
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16f5f3c
|
As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.
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empathy
love
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Edith Wharton |
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ec0ec7c
|
Everything may be labelled- but everybody is not.
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Edith Wharton |
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5f08a4b
|
But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lea..
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Edith Wharton |
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4f2fc15
|
though she had not had the strength to shake off the spell that bound her to him she had lost all spontaneity of feeling, and seemed to herself to be passively awaiting a fate she could not avert.
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realization
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Edith Wharton |
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cc91b82
|
It is so easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be
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Edith Wharton |
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079e5f9
|
It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.
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Edith Wharton |
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e3d5b45
|
I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.
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Edith Wharton |
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e2e7cde
|
Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths?
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idealism
illusions
truths
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Edith Wharton |
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0bd55db
|
She gave so many reasons that I've forgotten them all.
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Edith Wharton |
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a78d608
|
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.
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lovers
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Edith Wharton |
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8cd5d92
|
With a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.
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Edith Wharton |
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9810e4a
|
I shan't be lonely now. I was lonely; I was afraid. But the emptiness and the darkness are gone; when I turn back into myself now I'm like a child going at night into a room where there's always a light.
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Edith Wharton |
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ee2a19f
|
Women ought to be free - as free as we are,' he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.
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Edith Wharton |
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654c16f
|
He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear.
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Edith Wharton |
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a7593e6
|
There is someone I must say goodbye to. Oh, not you - we are sure to see each other again - but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back to you - I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with you.
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Edith Wharton |
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c2feb15
|
The very good people did not convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands - and you hated the things it asked of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I'd never known before - and it's better than anything I've known.
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responsibility
temptation
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Edith Wharton |
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e4ce55f
|
She sang, of course, "M'ama!" and not "he loves me," since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences."
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Edith Wharton |
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d68193d
|
Who's 'they'? Why don't you all get together and be 'they' yourselves?
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Edith Wharton |
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89e17b4
|
It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them.
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Edith Wharton |
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2a2ce1c
|
Everything about her was warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose.
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Edith Wharton |
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b0ea153
|
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.
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Edith Wharton |