Edith Wharton Quotes (112 Quotes)

Nothing could more clearly give the measure of the distance that the world had travelled.

In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires.

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

It seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, even if breakable in prosperity, should be indissoluble in misfortune.

Before Selden left college he had learned that there are as many different ways of going without money as of spending it.

It would presently be his task to take the bandage from this young woman's eyes, and bid her look forth on the world. But how many generations of the women who had gone to her making had descended bandaged to the family vault He shivered a little, remembering some of the new ideas in his scientific books, and the much-cited instance of the Kentucky cave-fish, which had ceased to develop eyes because they had no use for them.

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.

He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.

To be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it?

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

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

If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was sure of her ability to meet them it was characteristic of her to feel that the only problems she could not solve were those with which she was familiar.