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

More quotes by Edith Wharton

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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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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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There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
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He bent and laid his lips on her hands, which were cold and lifeless. She drew them away, and he turned to the door, found his coat and hat under the faint gas-light of the hall, and plunged out into the winter night bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate.
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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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We live in our own souls as in an unmapped region, a few acres of which we have cleared for our habitation while of the nature of those nearest us we know but the boundaries that march with ours.
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Think what stupid things the people must have done with their money who say they're 'happier without'.
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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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Yes, one gets over things. But there are certain memories one can't bit on.
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There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.
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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.
Edith Wharton
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In the rotation of crops there was a recognized season for wild oats but they were not sown more than once.
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In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.
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Inkstands and tea-cups are never as full as when one upsets them.
Edith Wharton
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Life is made up of compromises.
Edith Wharton
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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.
Edith Wharton
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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.
Edith Wharton
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I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views.
Edith Wharton
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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!
Edith Wharton
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She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.
Edith Wharton