Edith Wharton was an American novelist, short story writer and designer.
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(46 quotes found)
“I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.”
Edith Wharton
“The persons of their world lived in an atmosphere of faint implications and pale delicacies, and the fact that he and she understood each other without a word seemed to the young man to bring them nearer than any explanation would have done.”
“If we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.”
“Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.”
“A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue.”
“What's the use of making mysteries? It only makes people want to nose 'em out.”
“I feel that each case must be judged individually, on its own merits ... irrespective of stupid conventionalities... I mean, each woman's right to her liberty.”
“In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.”
“Though he turned the pages with the sensuous joy of the book-lover, he did not know what he was reading, and one book after another dropped from his hand. Suddenly, among them, he lit on a small volume of verse which he had ordered because the name had attracted him: "The House of Life." He took it up, and found himself plunged in an atmosphere unlike any he had ever breathed in books; so warm, so rich, and yet so ineffebly tender, that it gave a new and haunting beauty to the most elementary of human passions.”
“Everything about her was both vigorous and exquisite.”