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
Wanted
Supposed
Aunt
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

More quotes by Edith Wharton

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The value of books is proportionate to what may be called their plasticity -- their quality of being all things to all men, of being diversely moulded by the impact of fresh forms of thought.
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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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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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traditions that have lost their meaning are the hardest of all to destroy.
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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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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!
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Society soon grows used to any state of things which is imposed upon it without explanation.
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Almost everybody in the neighborhood had troubles, frankly localized and specified but only the chosen had complications. To have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death warrant. People struggled on for years wit
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What a shame it is for a nation to be developing without a sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.
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I was never allowed to read the popular American children's books of my day because, as my mother said, the children spoke bad English without the author's knowing it.
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If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.
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Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.
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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.
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Most timidities have such secret compensations and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self depreciation.
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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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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 was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free.
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No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity.
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...and wondering where he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not.
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The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.
Edith Wharton