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

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

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Almost everybody in the neighborhood had troubles, frankly localized and specified but only the chosen had complications. To have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death warrant. People struggled on for years wit
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Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying for their board.
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It is almost as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them proclaim that you think you are beautiful.
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The true felicity of a lover of books is the luxurious turning of page by page, the surrender, not meanly abject, but deliberate and cautious, with your wits about you, as you deliver yourself into the keeping of the book. This I call reading.
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He had her in his arms, her face like a wet flower at his lips, and all their vain terrors shriveling up like ghosts at sunrise.
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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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She wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do not inevitably become mere blurs to each other's vision.
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Since the Americans have ceased to have dyspepsia, they have lost the only thing that gave them any expression.
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Her vivid smile was like a light held up to dazzle me.
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True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. That new, that personal, vision is attained only by looking long enough at the object represented to make it the writer's own and the mind which would bring this secret gem to fruition must be able to nourish it with an accumulated wealth of knowledge and experience.
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For what endless years this life will have to go on! He felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth and the bounding blood in his veins.
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... caprice is as ruinous as routine.
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traditions that have lost their meaning are the hardest of all to destroy.
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But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well been half the world apart.
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They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything.
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An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.
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Little as she was addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from the empty noises of her life.
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Women ought to be free - as free as we are,' he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.
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The difference is that these young people take it for granted that they're going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always took it for granted that we shouldn't. Only, I wonder—the thing one's so certain of in advance: can it ever make one's heart beat as wildly?
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Think what stupid things the people must have done with their money who say they're 'happier without'.
Edith Wharton