Edith Wharton Quotes

Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone.

It was part of her discernment to be aware that life is the only real counselor, that wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissues.

The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.

Nothing is more perplexing to a man than the mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions.

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.

I can't love you unless I give you up.

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.

Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.

My little dog — a heartbeat at my feet.

The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.

What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.

Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.

There are two ways of spreading light: to be
The candle or the mirror that reflects it.

"She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you most wanted."

Archer received this strange communication in silence. His eyes remained unseeingly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below the window. At length he said in a low voice: "She never asked me."

I swear I only want to hear about you, to know what you've been doing. It's a hundred years since we've met-it may be another hundred before we meet again.