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84b7502
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The allegation that English girls had no conversation must be true; but theirs was a SPEAKING silence. Their eyes and smiles were eloquent! She hoped it would teach their own girls that they need not chatter like magpies.
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Edith Wharton |
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f1ad1a8
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To begin with, I hate these new-fangled intermediate meals. Why can't people eat enough at luncheon to last till dinner?
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Edith Wharton |
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b625e43
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Lady Brightlingsea considered it her duty to fish out of this out darkness, and drag for a moment into the light, any person or obligation entitled to fix her husband's attention; but they always faded back into night as soon as they had served their purpose.
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Edith Wharton |
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1e1b0ef
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She knew that Virginia's survey of the world was limited to people, the clothes they wore, and the carriages they drove in. Her own universe was so crammed to bursting with wonderful sights and sounds that, in spite of her sense of Virginia's superiority - her beauty, her ease, her confidence - Nan sometimes felt a shamefaced pity for her.
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Edith Wharton |
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9ac82f8
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I think I like 'em better like that...divinely dull...just the quiet bearers of their own beauty, like the priestesses in a Panathenaic procession.
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Edith Wharton |
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6cadf89
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It was amusement enough to be with a group of fearless and talkative girls, who said new things in a new language, who were ignorant of tradition and unimpressed by distinctions of rank; but it was soon clear that their young hostesses must be treated with the same respect, if not with the same ceremony as English girls of good family.
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Edith Wharton |
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5853090
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Their bewilderment is so great that, when one of the girls spoke of archery clubs being fashionable in the States, somebody blurted out: "I suppose the Indians taught you?"; and I am constantly expecting to ask Mrs. St. George how she heats her wigwam in winter."
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Edith Wharton |
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bebe0a8
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Sir Helmsley imparted this information in a loud, almost challenging voice, as he always did when he had to communicate anything unexpected or difficult to account for. Explaining was a nuisance, and somewhat of a derogation. He resented anything that made it necessary, and always spoke as if his interlocutor ought to have known beforehand the answer to the questions he was putting.
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Edith Wharton |
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2369c27
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it became clear to her observers that she was not quick at shifting her facial scenery. It was as though her countenance had so long been set in an expression of unchallenged superiority that the muscles had stiffened, and refused to obey her orders.
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Edith Wharton |
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b86d1cf
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Courage - that's the secret! If only people who are in love weren't always so afraid of risking their happiness by looking it in the eyes.
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Edith Wharton |
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acf3311
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She was something he knew he had missed: the flower of life.
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old-love
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Edith Wharton |
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e83948f
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All the exquisite influences of the hour trembled in their veins, and drew them to each other as the loosened leaves were drawn to the earth.
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Edith Wharton |
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1d04920
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But he would see clearer, breathe freer in her presence: she was at once the dead weight at his breast and the spar which should float them to safety.
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Edith Wharton |
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79e1712
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I went on steadily trying to 'find out how to'; but I wrote two or three novels without feeling that I had made much progress. It was not until I wrote "Ethan Frome" that I suddenly felt the artisan's full control of his implements. When "Ethan Frome" first appeared I was severely criticized by the reviewers for what was considered the clumsy structure of the tale. I had pondered long on this structure, had felt its peculiar difficulties, a..
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structure
writing-process
novel
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Edith Wharton |
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5d688a8
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Since then he had been walking with a ghost: the miserable ghost of his illusion. Only he had somehow vivified, coloured, substantiated it, by the force of his own great need - as a man might breathe a semblance of life into a dear drowned body that he cannot give up for dead.
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need
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Edith Wharton |
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bd7e942
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no doubt the rabbit always thinks it is fascinating the anaconda.
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Edith Wharton |
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d32fc90
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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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07158ea
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He knew enough of his subject to know that he did not know enough to write about it....
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Edith Wharton |
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e3f9dc7
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I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps.
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Edith Wharton |
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413f8df
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Poor May!" he said. "Poor? Why poor?" she echoed with a strained laugh. "Because I shall never be able to open a window without worrying you," he rejoined, laughing also. For a moment she was silent; then she said very low, her head bowed over her work: "I shall never worry if you're happy." "Ah, my dear; and I shall never be happy unless I can open the windows!" "In THIS weather?" she remonstrated; and with a sigh he buried his head in his..
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marriage
happiness
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Edith Wharton |
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8742796
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you?"--his words overwhelmed him with a realization of the cowardice which had driven him from her at the very moment of attainment. Yes--he had always feared his fate, and he was too honest to disown his cowardice now;"
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Edith Wharton |
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6c73c35
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Even now, however, she was not always happy. She had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them.
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Edith Wharton |
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ce3479b
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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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65416d3
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when ''such things happened'' it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehow always criminal of the woman.
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Edith Wharton |
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b98737a
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Denis Eady was the son of Michael Eady, the ambitious Irish grocer, whose suppleness and effrontery had given Starkfield its first notion of "smart" business methods, and whose new brick store testified to the success of the attempt. His son seemed likely to follow in his steps, and was meanwhile applying the same arts to the conquest of the Starkfield maidenhood. Hitherto Ethan Frome had been content to think him a mean fellow; but now he ..
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Edith Wharton |
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68b50c5
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O, ne, izobshcho ne iskashe na Mei da b'de pris'shcha takava naivnost, tazi naivnost, koiato predpazva uma ot v'obrazhenieto, a s'rtseto -- ot zhiteiskiia opit.
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Edith Wharton |
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16ab562
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he was the kind of man who brings a sour mouth to the eating of the sweetest apple.
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Edith Wharton |
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9c7e071
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Anthropology provides Archer with terminology to expose the ferocity and, more important, the hypocrisy characterizing his prosperous, upper-class social community.
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Edith Wharton |
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ece1cab
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Theodora usually found that her good intentions matured too late for practical results.
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Edith Wharton |
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67a45d8
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She clutched her manuscript, carrying it tenderly through the crowd, like a live thing that had been hurt.
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Edith Wharton |
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6e30568
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Don't you know how, in talking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time not what one wants to but what one can?
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Edith Wharton |
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f037132
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In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel the whole tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus detached from all that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out suppliant hands to him from the world in which he and she had once met for a moment, and where he felt an over-mastering longing to be with her again.
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Edith Wharton |
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88606ac
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It is only because I am tired and have such odious things to think about," she kept repeating; and it seemed an added injustice that petty cares should leave a trace on the beauty which was her only defence against them. But" --
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Edith Wharton |
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5b069da
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Everything about her was warm and soft and scented: even the stains of her grief became her as rain-drops do the beaten rose.
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Edith Wharton |
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b14606f
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A tremor of apprehension encircled the room. None of the ladies required any preparation to pronounce on a question of morals; but when they were called ethics it was different. The club, when fresh from the "Encyclopedia Brittanica," the "Reader's Handbook" or Smith's "Classical Dictionary," could deal confidently with any subject; but when taken unawares it had been known to define agnosticism as a heresy of the Early Church and Professor..
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Edith Wharton |
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c4c7a88
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The "Hazeldean heart" was a proverbial boast in the family; the Hazeldeans privately considered it more distinguished than the Sillerton gout, and far more refined than the Wesson liver; and it had permitted most of them to survive, in valetudinarian ease, to a ripe old age, when they died of some quite other disorder. But Charles Hazeldean had defied it, and it took its revenge, and took it savagely."
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illness
humor
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Edith Wharton |
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fb9b102
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In this interpretative light Mrs. Grancy acquired the charm which makes some women's faces like a book of which the last page is never turned. There was always something new to read in her eyes.
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woman
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Edith Wharton |
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fb4879f
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They had never been at peace together, they two; and now he felt himself drawn downward into the strange mysterious depths of her tranquillity.
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loss
loss-of-love
regret
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Edith Wharton |
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6fdd20f
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But we're so different, you know: she likes being good, and I like being happy. And
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Edith Wharton |
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d34b183
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The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink..
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description
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Edith Wharton |
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9e9d730
|
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 beside you, like this, with that other vision in my mind, just quietly trusting to it to come true.
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Edith Wharton |
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f29ddf4
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And of what account was anybody's past, in the huge kaleidoscope where all the social atoms spun around on the same plane?
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Edith Wharton |
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86f4e41
|
You don't know how much I need such a friend," she said. "My aunt is full of copy-book axioms, but they were all meant to apply to conduct in the early fifties. I always feel that to live up to them would include wearing book-muslin with gigot sleeves. And the other women--my best friends--well, they use me or abuse me; but they don't care a straw what happens to me. I've been about too long--people are getting tired of me; they are beginni..
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Edith Wharton |
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4a3d1de
|
There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free;
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Edith Wharton |