Quotes of Edith Wharton - somelinesforyou

“ In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ 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

“ Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before. ”

- 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? ”

- 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. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ 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

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

- Edith Wharton

“ A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ If only we’d stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time. ”

- Edith Wharton

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

- Edith Wharton

“ Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ My little dog — a heartbeat at my feet. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ Each time you happen to me all over again. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ 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. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Wellyou did love me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom. ”

- Edith Wharton

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

- Edith Wharton

“ 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. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ Yes it was happiness she still wanted, and the glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no account. One by one she had detached herself from the baser possibilities , and she saw that nothing now remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation. "The House of Mirth ”

- Edith Wharton

“ High Pasture Come upcome up: in the dim vale below The autumn mist muffles the fading trees, But on this keen hillpasture, though the breeze Has stretched the thwart boughs bare to meet the snow, Night is not, autumn is notbut the flow Of vast, ethereal and irradiate seas, Poured from the far world's flaming boundaries In waxing tides of unimagined glow. And to that height illumined of the mind he calls us still by the familiar way, Leaving the sodden tracks of life behind, Befogged in failure, chilled with love's decay Showing us, as the nightmists upward wind, How on the heights is day and still more day. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ True originality consists not in a new manner, but in a new vision. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ Her failure was a useful preliminary to success. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters; but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ Yes, you have been away a very long time. " "Oh, centuries and centuries; so long," she said, "that I’m sure I’m dead and buried, and this dear old place is heaven; ”

- Edith Wharton

“ Real civilisation means an education that extends to the whole of life, in contradistinction to that of school or college: it means an education that forms speech, forms manners, forms taste, forms ideals, and above all forms judgment. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ Real civilisation means an education that extends to the whole of life, in contradistinction to that of school or college: it means an education that forms speech, forms manners, forms taste, forms ideals, and above all forms judgment. ”

- Edith Wharton

“ Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want? ”

- Edith Wharton
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