Edith Wharton quotes - page 2

Set wide the window. Let me drink the day. I loved light ever, light in eye and brain - No tapers mirrored in long palace floors, Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles, But just the common dusty wind-blown day That roofs earth's millions. (Edith Wharton)
The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your friends have lost. View quote
Edith Wharton
I can't love you unless I give you up. View quote
Edith Wharton
There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow. View quote
Edith Wharton
The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend! View quote
Edith Wharton
Each time you happen to me all over again. View quote
Edith Wharton
After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others. View quote
Edith Wharton
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. View quote
Edith Wharton
Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors? View quote
Edith Wharton
She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making. View quote
Edith Wharton
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. (Edith Wharton)
Ah, good conversation - there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing. View quote
Edith Wharton
They belonged to that vast group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets. View quote
Edith Wharton
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. View quote
Edith Wharton
We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we? View quote
Edith Wharton
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. View quote
Edith Wharton
It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes. View quote
Edith Wharton
They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods. View quote
Edith Wharton
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. View quote
Edith Wharton
Everything may be labelled- but everybody is not. View quote
Edith Wharton
Poetry and art are the breath of life to her. (Edith Wharton)
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. View quote
Edith Wharton
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. View quote
Edith Wharton
It is so easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be. View quote
Edith Wharton
He had known the love that is fed on caresses and feeds them; but this passion that was closer than his bones was not to be superficially satisfied. View quote
Edith Wharton