Quotes from Edith Wharton

But he would see clearer, breathe freer in her presence: she was at once the dead weight at his breast and the spar which should float them to safety.

He took [the book] up, and found himself plunged in an atmosphere unlike any he had ever breathed in books; so warm, so rich, and yet so ineffably tender, that it gave a new and haunting beauty to the most elementary of human passions.

Newland never seems to look ahead,' Mrs. Welland once ventured to complain to her daughter; and May answered serenely: 'No; but you see it doesn't matter, because when there's nothing particular to do he reads a book.

What was left of the little world he had grown up in, and whose standards had bent and bound him?

the same quality of making other standards non-existent by ignoring them. This attribute was common to most of Lily's set: they had a force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own range of perception.

they had a force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own range of perception.

The provocation in her eyes increased his amusement—he had not supposed she would waste her powder on such small game; but perhaps she was only keeping her hand in; or perhaps a girl of her type had no conversation but of the personal kind. At any rate, she was amazingly pretty, and he had asked her to tea and must live up to his obligations.

Life is the saddest thing there is, next to death; yet there are always new countries to see, new books to read (and, I hope, to write), a thousand little daily wonders to marvel at and rejoice in.

To begin with, I hate these new-fangled intermediate meals. Why can't people eat enough at luncheon to last till dinner?

Age seemed to have come down on him as winter comes on the hills after a storm.

She knew that Virginia's survey of the world was limited to people, the clothes they wore, and the carriages they drove in. Her own universe was so crammed to bursting with wonderful sights and sounds that, in spite of her sense of Virginia's superiority - her beauty, her ease, her confidence - Nan sometimes felt a shamefaced pity for her.

It was amusement enough to be with a group of fearless and talkative girls, who said new things in a new language, who were ignorant of tradition and unimpressed by distinctions of rank; but it was soon clear that their young hostesses must be treated with the same respect, if not with the same ceremony as English girls of good family.