Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Except
Scandal
Gave
Placed
Scene
Scenes
Courage
Ill
Nothing
Considered
Way
Rise
Dreaded
People
York
Bred
Disease
Decency

More quotes by Edith Wharton

Image
The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.
Edith Wharton
Image
It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.
Edith Wharton
Image
People struggled on for years with 'troubles,' but they almost always succumbed to 'complications.
Edith Wharton
Image
Everything may be labelled- but everybody is not.
Edith Wharton
Image
Society soon grows used to any state of things which is imposed upon it without explanation.
Edith Wharton
Image
One can remain alive ... if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity interested in big things and happy in small ways.
Edith Wharton
Image
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.
Edith Wharton
Image
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.
Edith Wharton
Image
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
Image
Poetry and art are the breath of life to her.
Edith Wharton
Image
... even in houses commonly held to be 'booky' one finds, nine times out of ten, not a library but a book-dump.
Edith Wharton
Image
I discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has helped me through several painful episodes.
Edith Wharton
Image
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
Edith Wharton
Image
It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.
Edith Wharton
Image
[I]t's safer to be fond of dangerous people.
Edith Wharton
Image
If proportion is the good breeding of architecture, symmetry, or the answering of one part to another, may be defined as the sanity of decoration.
Edith Wharton
Image
I don't believe in God, but I do believe in His saints.
Edith Wharton
Image
Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.
Edith Wharton
Image
...and wondering where he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not.
Edith Wharton
Image
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