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
Nothing is more perplexing to a man than the mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions.
...In the summer New York was the only place in which one could escape from New Yorkers...
Archer reddened to the temples but dared not move or speak: it was as if her words had been some rare butterfly that the least motion might drive off on startled wings, but that might gather a flock if it were left undisturbed.
They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything.
Staunch and faithful lovers that they are, they give back a hundred fold every sign of love that one ever gives them.
The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.
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.
Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.
When people ask for time, it's always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesn't take half as long to say.
I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views.
He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. That new, that personal, vision is attained only by looking long enough at the object represented to make it the writer's own; and the mind which would bring this secret gem to fruition must be able to nourish it with an accumulated wealth of knowledge and experience.
She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you most wanted." Archer received this strange communication in silence. His eyes remained unseeingly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below the window. At length he said in a low voice: "She never asked me.