Edith Wharton quotes - page 6

He bent and laid his lips on her hands, which were cold and lifeless. She drew them away, and he turned to the door, found his coat and hat under the faint gas-light of the hall, and plunged out into the winter night bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate. (Edith Wharton)
Most timidities have such secret compensations and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self depreciation. View quote
Edith Wharton
Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene as a part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have surprised them to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the lights among the boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky. The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in it together. View quote
Edith Wharton
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. View quote
Edith Wharton
The only way to not think about money is to have a great deal of it." You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe. View quote
Edith Wharton
She had taken everything else from him, and now she meant to take the one thing that made up for it all. View quote
Edith Wharton
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. View quote
Edith Wharton
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. View quote
Edith Wharton
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. View quote
Edith Wharton
It is the omnipresent rush of water which give the Este Gardens their peculiar character. From the Anio, drawn up the hillside at incalculable cost and labour, a thousand rills gush downward, terrace by terrace, channeling the stone rails of the balusters, leaping from step to step, dripping into mossy conches, flashing in spray from the horns of sea-gods and the jaws of mythical monsters, or forcing themselves in irrepressible overflow down the ivy-matted banks. View quote
Edith Wharton
. . . she was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company . . . (Edith Wharton)
It seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, even if breakable in prosperity, should be indissoluble in misfortune. View quote
Edith Wharton
The difference is that these young people take it for granted that they're going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always took it for granted that we shouldn't. Only, I wonder-the thing one's so certain of in advance: can it ever make one's heart beat as wildly? View quote
Edith Wharton