Top 15 Edith Wharton Quotes

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

Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.

My little old dog
a heart-beat
at my feet

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

Each time you happen to me all over again.

If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.

The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!

There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there’s only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time.

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

Ah, good conversation — there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?

There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul.

I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.

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.

My little dog — a heartbeat at my feet.