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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.

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
Order
Image
Smashing
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

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The desire for symmetry, for balance, for rhythm in form as well as in sound, is one of the most inveterate of human instincts.
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She had been bored all afternoon by Percy Gryce... but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptibilities, and all on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her for life.
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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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traditions that have lost their meaning are the hardest of all to destroy.
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I don't know that I should care for a man who made life easy I should want some one who made it interesting.
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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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True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. That new, that personal, vision is attained only by looking long enough at the object represented to make it the writer's own and the mind which would bring this secret gem to fruition must be able to nourish it with an accumulated wealth of knowledge and experience.
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Inkstands and tea-cups are never as full as when one upsets them.
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True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.
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Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.
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The visible world is a daily miracle, for those who have eyes and ears.
Edith Wharton
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[I]t's safer to be fond of dangerous people.
Edith Wharton
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It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.
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Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
Edith Wharton
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Everything may be labelled- but everybody is not.
Edith Wharton
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One can remain alive ... if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity interested in big things and happy in small ways.
Edith Wharton
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The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.
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The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!
Edith Wharton
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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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I'm not much interested in travelling scholarships for women - or in fact in scholarships, tout court! - they'd much better stay at home and mind the baby. Still less am I interested in scholarships for female Yids.
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