Quote: Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be American before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, and having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries? [Edith Wharton]
Quote: There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: Almost everybody in the neighborhood had troubles, frankly localized and specified; but only the chosen had complications. To have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death warrant. People struggled on for years wit [Edith Wharton]
Quote: I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, and consequently suggests more tugging, and pain, and diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: I despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such whining sallow women, such utter absence of the amenities, such crass food, crass manners, crass landscape!! What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without the sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: There is too much sour grapes for my taste in the present American attitude. The time to denounce the bankers was when we were all feeding off their gold plate; not now! At present they have not only my sympathy but my preference. They are the last representatives of our native industries. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: My little dog - a heartbeat at my feet. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: Silence may be as variously shaded as speech. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing. [Edith Wharton]
Quote: The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background. [Edith Wharton]