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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| c7b90d3 | Often already, during the fortnight that he had passed under her roof, when she enquired how he meant to spend his afternoon, he had answered paradoxically: "Oh, I think for a change I'll just save it instead of spending it--" | Edith Wharton | ||
| 5b7fe57 | Lily's. 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. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 202b930 | Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery. There were a hundred million tickets in his lottery, and there was only one prize; the chances had been too decidedly against him. When he thought of Ellen Olenska it was abstractly, serenely, as one might think of .. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 1e14fec | they had a force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own range of perception. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 7e60fb6 | It was difficult to define her beyond saying that she seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so much from any exaggerated instinct of hospitality as because she could not sustain life except in a crowd. | Edith Wharton | ||
| ee06f48 | no treasure-house of Atreus was ever as rich as a well-stored memory. | Edith Wharton | ||
| dc7e1e9 | She rose too, not as if to meet him or to flee from him, but quietly, as though the worst of the task were done and she had only to wait; so quietly that, as he came close, her outstretched hands acted not as a check but as a guide to him. | doomed-love sad | Edith Wharton | |
| 9394987 | He and she belonged to each other for always: he understood that now. The impulse which had first drawn them together again, in spite of reason, in spite of themselves almost, that deep-seated instinctive need that each had of the other, would never again wholly let them go. | Edith Wharton | ||
| c469e13 | He was as inexpressive as he is to-day, and yet oddly obtrusive: one of those uncomfortable presences whose silence is an interruption. | Edith Wharton | ||
| ef67ed2 | Every drop of blood in Lily's veins invited her to happiness. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 09292bd | the people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn't it fairer to look at them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or intelligently, according to the capacity of the user? | philosophy society | Edith Wharton | |
| b247cbb | But I am born happy every morning, | Edith Wharton | ||
| 3fba1b8 | It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them." | Edith Wharton | ||
| 4d30a2b | Newland never seems to look ahead,' Mrs. Welland once ventured to complain to her daughter; and May answered serenely: 'No; but you see it doesn't matter, because when there's nothing particular to do he reads a book. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 6fb6002 | the same quality of making other standards non-existent by ignoring them. This attribute was common to most of Lily's set: they had a force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own range of perception. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 6ce5ddd | As he lay there, fragments of past states of emotion, fugitive felicities of thought and sensation, rose and floated on the surface of his thoughts. It was one of those moments when the accumulated impressions of life converge on heart and brain, elucidating, enlacing each other, in a mysterious confusion of beauty. He had had glimpses of such a state before, of such mergings of the personal with the general life that one felt one's self a .. | words | Edith Wharton | |
| 7cc28f5 | It was one of the great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 4742294 | But she saw that his eyes, which were sand-colored like his face, and sandy-lashed, had found another occupation. They were fixed on Conchita Closson, who sat opposite to him; they rested on her unblinkingly, immovably, as if she had been a natural object, a landscape or a cathedral, that one had traveled far to see, and had the right to look at as long as one chose. He's drinking her up like blotting paper. I thought they were better broug.. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 84b7502 | 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. | Edith Wharton | ||
| f1ad1a8 | To begin with, I hate these new-fangled intermediate meals. Why can't people eat enough at luncheon to last till dinner? | Edith Wharton | ||
| b625e43 | 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. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 1e1b0ef | 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. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 9ac82f8 | 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. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 6cadf89 | 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. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 5853090 | 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." | Edith Wharton | ||
| bebe0a8 | 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. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 2369c27 | 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. | Edith Wharton | ||
| b86d1cf | 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. | Edith Wharton | ||
| acf3311 | She was something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. | old-love | Edith Wharton | |
| e83948f | 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. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 1d04920 | 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. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 79e1712 | 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.. | novel structure writing-process | Edith Wharton | |
| 5d688a8 | 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. | need | Edith Wharton | |
| bd7e942 | no doubt the rabbit always thinks it is fascinating the anaconda. | Edith Wharton | ||
| d32fc90 | It's a hundred years since we've met - it may be another hundred before we meet again. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 07158ea | He knew enough of his subject to know that he did not know enough to write about it.... | Edith Wharton | ||
| e3f9dc7 | I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 413f8df | 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.. | happiness marriage | Edith Wharton | |
| 8742796 | 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;" | Edith Wharton | ||
| 22279e1 | I checked out the two Edith Wharton books I had just returned because I'd read them so long ago and they are more apropos now than ever. They were The House of Mirth and The Children, which is about how life in the United States in New York changed in twenty-seven years fifty years ago. ("Wants")" | Grace Paley | ||
| 6c73c35 | 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. | Edith Wharton | ||
| ce3479b | It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes | Edith Wharton | ||
| 65416d3 | when ''such things happened'' it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehow always criminal of the woman. | Edith Wharton | ||
| 0bd6cd0 | What do we want from our mothers when we are children? Complete submission. Oh, | Zadie Smith |