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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

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

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I wonder why rich people always grow fat I suppose it's because there's nothing to worry them.
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Overhead hung a summer sky furrowed with the rush of rockets and from the east a late moon, pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the coast, sent across the bay a shaft of brightness which paled to ashes in the red glitter of the illuminated boats.
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I discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has helped me through several painful episodes.
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Society soon grows used to any state of things which is imposed upon it without explanation.
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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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In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires.
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The visible world is a daily miracle for those who have eyes and ears and I still warm hands thankfully at the old fire, though every year it is fed with the dry wood of more old memories.
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There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
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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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And all the while, I suppose, he thought, real people were living somewhere, and real things happening to them.
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The effect produced by a short story depends almost entirely on its form.
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We ought to be opening a bottle of wine!
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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.
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The visible world is a daily miracle, for those who have eyes and ears.
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I have drunk of the wine of life at last, I have known the thing best worth knowing, I have been warmed through and through, never to grow quite cold again till the end.
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They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods
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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.
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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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What is one's personality, detached from that of the friends with whom fate happens to have linked one? I cannot think of myself apart from the influence of the two or three greatest friendships of my life, and any account of my own growth must be that of their stimulating and enlightening influence.
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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
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