Edith Wharton Quotes - Page 9

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To have you here, you mean-in reach and yet out of reach? To meet you in this way, on the sly? It's the very reverse of what I want.

Edith Wharton

Mean, Want, Way

Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.2162, Delphi Classics

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She would not have put herself out so much to say so little.

Edith Wharton

Littles

Edith Wharton (2016). “Madame de Treymes: American Literature”, p.27, VM eBooks

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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.

Edith Wharton

Touching, Fans, Littles

Edith Wharton (2012). “The Age of Innocence”, p.42, Courier Corporation

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The very good people didn't convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands — and yet you hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference.

Edith Wharton

Hands, People, Golden

"Complete Works of Edith Wharton".

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It was the old New York way...the way people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes", except those who gave rise to them.

Edith Wharton

New York, People, Disease

The Age of Innocence ch. 33 (1920)

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Everything about her was warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose.

Edith Wharton

Grief, Rose, Raindrops

Edith Wharton (2013). “House of Mirth and the Age of Innocence”, p.155, Simon and Schuster

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It was too late for happiness - but not too late to be helped by the thought of what I had missed. That is all I haved lived on - don't take it from me now

Edith Wharton

Too Late, Late

Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.790, Delphi Classics

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Yes, you have been away a very long time.' 'Oh, centuries and centuries; so long,' she said, 'that I'm sure I'm dead and buried and this dear old place is heaven.

Edith Wharton

Long, Heaven, Century

Edith Wharton (2016). “The Age of Innocence: American Literature”, p.11, VM eBooks

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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.

Edith Wharton

Communication, Archer, Eye

Edith Wharton (2012). “The Age of Innocence”, p.231, Courier Corporation

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But marriage is one long sacrifice.... Chapter 21, Medora Manson speaking to Newland Archer

Edith Wharton

Archer, Sacrifice, Long

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I'm not much interested in travelling scholarships for women - or in fact in scholarships, tout court! - they'd much better stay at home and mind the baby. Still less am I interested in scholarships for female Yids.

Edith Wharton

Baby, Home, Mind

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What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.

Edith Wharton

Compassion, Silence, Darkness

Edith Wharton (2016). “The House of Mirth: Edith Wharton”, p.134, VM eBooks

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... naturalness is not always consonant with taste.

Edith Wharton

Taste, Consonants

Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.1266, Delphi Classics

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The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted this submergence as philosohpically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the centre of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation.

Edith Wharton

Mirrors, August, Cities

Edith Wharton (2014). “Edith Wharton The Dover Reader”, p.271, Courier Corporation

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I swear I only want to hear about you, to know what you've been doing. It's a hundred years since we've met-it may be another hundred before we meet again.

Edith Wharton

Years, May, Want

Edith Wharton (2013). “House of Mirth and the Age of Innocence”, p.457, Simon and Schuster

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The value of books is proportionate to what may be called their plasticity -- their quality of being all things to all men, of being diversely moulded by the impact of fresh forms of thought.

Edith Wharton

Book, Men, Impact

Edith Wharton (2012). “Summer”, p.4, Courier Corporation

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Through this atmosphere of torrid splendor moved wan beings as richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity... Somewhere behind them, in the background of their lives there was doubtless a real past, yet they had no more real existence than the poet's shades in limbo.

Edith Wharton

Real, Past, Atmosphere

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One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace

Edith Wharton

Moving, Discovery, Pace

Edith Wharton (2016). “The House of Mirth: Edith Wharton”, p.269, VM eBooks

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

Edith Wharton

Stars, Fire, Sky

Edith Wharton (2016). “Ethan Frome”, p.18, First Avenue Editions

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It is the omnipresent rush of water which give the Este Gardens their peculiar character. From the Anio, drawn up the hillside at incalculable cost and labour, a thousand rills gush downward, terrace by terrace, channeling the stone rails of the balusters, leaping from step to step, dripping into mossy conches, flashing in spray from the horns of sea-gods and the jaws of mythical monsters, or forcing themselves in irrepressible overflow down the ivy-matted banks.

Edith Wharton

Rain, Character, Garden

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Damn words; they're just the pots and pans of life, the pails and scrubbing-brushes. I wish I didn't have to think in words.

Edith Wharton

Thinking, Wish, Pot

Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.3664, Delphi Classics

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I was never allowed to read the popular American children's books of my day because, as my mother said, the children spoke bad English without the author's knowing it.

Edith Wharton

Mother, Children, Book

Edith Wharton (2016). “A Backward Glance”, p.42, Edith Wharton

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Archer was too intelligent to think that a young woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that reminded her of her past. She might believe herself wholly in revolt against it; but what had charmed her in it would still charm her even though it were against her will.

Edith Wharton

Believe, Archer, Intelligent

Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.2047, Delphi Classics

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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.

Edith Wharton

Eye, Long, Opening

Edith Wharton (2015). “The Age of Innocence”, p.61, Xist Publishing

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...though she had not had the strength to shake off the spell that bound her to him she had lost all spontaneity of feeling, and seemed to herself to be passively awaiting a fate she could not avert.

Edith Wharton

Fate, Feelings, Spontaneity

Edith Wharton (2001). “Summer”, p.138, Electric Book Company

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Born: January 24, 1862
Died: August 11, 1937
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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