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
I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.
The early mist had vanished and the fields lay like a silver shield under the sun. It was one of the days when the glitter of winter shines through a pale haze of spring.
Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
What is one's personality, detached from that of the friends with whom fate happens to have linked one? I cannot think of myself apart from the influence of the two or three greatest friendships of my life, and any account of my own growth must be that of their stimulating and enlightening influence.
One of the great things about travel is you find out how many good, kind people there are.
True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.
... naturalness is not always consonant with taste.
Each time you happen to me all over again.
But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.
The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!
It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
If we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.
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.