Quote

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.

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
Might
Exercise
Conspiracy
Factitious
Right
Creation
Oppressed
Lordly
Made
Dead
Mothers
Cunningly
Long
Pleasure
Purity
Aunts
Like
Felt
Grandmother
Grandmothers
Mother
Snow
Manufactured
Order
Image
Smashing
Wanted
Supposed
Aunt

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He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.
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To visit Morocco is still like turning the pages of some illuminated Persian manuscript all embroidered with bright shapes and subtle lines.
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But marriage is one long sacrifice.... Chapter 21, Medora Manson speaking to Newland Archer
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In every heart there should be one grief that is like a well in the desert.
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... how I understand that love of living, of being in this wonderful, astounding world even if one can look at it only through theprison bars of illness and suffering! Plus je vois, the more I am thrilled by the spectacle.
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Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.
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... naturalness is not always consonant with taste.
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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
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One of the great things about travel is you find out how many good, kind people there are.
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She was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company.
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If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.
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Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
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Everybody who does anything at all does too much.
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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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She gave so many reasons that I've forgotten them all.
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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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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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It was amusement enough to be with a group of fearless and talkative girls, who said new things in a new language, who were ignorant of tradition and unimpressed by distinctions of rank but it was soon clear that their young hostesses must be treated with the same respect, if not with the same ceremony as English girls of good family.
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Any rapidly enacted episode. . .should be seen through only one pair of eyes.
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