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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.

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
Boundaries
Souls
Habitation
Cleared
Nature
Acres
Soul
Nearest
Live
Region
Regions
March

More quotes by Edith Wharton

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The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.
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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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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.
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Don't you ever mind, she asked suddenly, not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?
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And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.
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In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.
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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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She was very near hating him now yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin, dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his clothes—she was conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven with her deepest life.
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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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Their long years together had shown him that it did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of ugly appetites.
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If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.
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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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In all the arts abundance seems to be one of the surest signs of vocation.
Edith Wharton
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Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving towards the watcher on the shore.
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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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Damn words they're just the pots and pans of life, the pails and scrubbing-brushes. I wish I didn't have to think in words.
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Don't they always go from bad to worse? There's no turning back--your old self rejects you, and shuts you out. ~Lilly Bart
Edith Wharton
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Society soon grows used to any state of things which is imposed upon it without explanation.
Edith Wharton
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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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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.
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