Edith Wharton was an American novelist, short story writer and designer.
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(46 quotes found)
“Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.”
Edith Wharton
“His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen.”
“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.”
“There are moments when a man's imagination so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny”
“They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods”
“He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime”
“The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.”
“Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.”
“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.”
“The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.”