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Their long years together had shown him that it did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of ugly appetites.

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
Together
Kept
Matter
Ugly
Much
Dignity
Long
Mere
Years
Became
Appetites
Battle
Shown
Marriage
Appetite
Duty
Dull

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He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.
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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.
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Her failure was a useful preliminary to success.
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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.
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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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... there are spines to which the immobility of worship is not a strain.
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there are lots of ways of answering a letter - and writing doesn't happen to be mine.
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Don't they always go from bad to worse? There's no turning back--your old self rejects you, and shuts you out. ~Lilly Bart
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Everything may be labelled- but everybody is not.
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One of the great things about travel is you find out how many good, kind people there are.
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It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country.
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