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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.

Edith Wharton

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Edith Wharton
Age: 75 †
Born: 1862
Born: January 24
Died: 1937
Died: August 11
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Translator
Writer
New York City
New York
Edith Newbold Jones
Edith Newbold Jones Wharton
Moving
Temples
Undisturbed
Speak
Motion
Startled
Left
Rare
Archer
Might
Drive
Flock
Wings
Dared
Move
Flocks
Least
Gather
Words
Butterfly
Reddened

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Ah, the poverty, the miserable poverty, of any love that lies outside of marriage, of any love that is not a living together, a sharing of all!
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Mothers and daughters are part of each other's consciousness, in different degrees and in a different way, but still with the mutual sense of something which has always been there. A real mother is just a habit of thought to her children.
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She gave so many reasons that I've forgotten them all.
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Do you know-I hardly remembered you? Hardly remembered me? I mean: how shall I explain? I-it's always so. Each time you happen to me all over again.
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Life's just a perpetual piecing together of broken bits.
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... caprice is as ruinous as routine.
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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.
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He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.
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After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
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She seemed to melt against him in her terror, and he caught her in his arms, held her fast there, felt her lashes beat his cheek like netted butterflies.
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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.
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She had been bored all afternoon by Percy Gryce... but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptibilities, and all on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her for life.
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Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.
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The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.
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Everything may be labelled- but everybody is not.
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[I]t's safer to be fond of dangerous people.
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Habit is necessary it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.
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... even in houses commonly held to be 'booky' one finds, nine times out of ten, not a library but a book-dump.
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It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.
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traditions that have lost their meaning are the hardest of all to destroy.
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