Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton
Edith Whartonwas a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 January 1862
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them.
Then stay with me a little longer,' Madame Olenska said in a low tone, just touching his knee with her plumed fan. It was the lightest touch, but it thrilled him like a caress.
The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.
What's the use of making mysteries? It only makes people want to nose 'em out.
She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin, dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his clothes—she was conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven with her deepest life.
...In the summer New York was the only place in which one could escape from New Yorkers...
She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.
She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.
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.
[B]ut he had lived in a world in which, as he said, no one who loved ideas need hunger mentally.
It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.
Staunch and faithful lovers that they are, they give back a hundred fold every sign of love that one ever gives them.
I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.
There is someone I must say goodbye to. Oh, not you - we are sure to see each other again - but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back to you - I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with you.