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

More quotes by Edith Wharton

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Everything may be labelled- but everybody is not.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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They belonged to that vast group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets.
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There is too much sour grapes for my taste in the present American attitude. The time to denounce the bankers was when we were all feeding off their gold plate not now! At present they have not only my sympathy but my preference. They are the last representatives of our native industries.
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... naturalness is not always consonant with taste.
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In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.
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Until the raw ingredients of a pudding make a pudding, I shall never believe that the raw material of sensation and thought can make a work of art without the cook's intervening.
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The visible world is a daily miracle, for those who have eyes and ears.
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Everybody who does anything at all does too much.
Edith Wharton
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Life is the only real counselor wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.
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Yes, you have been away a very long time.' 'Oh, centuries and centuries so long,' she said, 'that I'm sure I'm dead and buried and this dear old place is heaven.
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The only thing to do is to hug one's friends tight and do one's job.
Edith Wharton
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After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
Edith Wharton
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The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.
Edith Wharton
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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.
Edith Wharton
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there are lots of ways of answering a letter - and writing doesn't happen to be mine.
Edith Wharton