Quote

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.

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
Would
Prize
Life
Flower
Like
Knew
Despairing
Thought
Unattainable
Firsts
Improbable
First
Lottery
Thing
Missed
Something
Drawn

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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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After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
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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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Life is made up of compromises.
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I can't love you unless I give you up.
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And all the while, I suppose, he thought, real people were living somewhere, and real things happening to them.
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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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Society soon grows used to any state of things which is imposed upon it without explanation.
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Then stay with me a little longer,' Madame Olenska said in a low tone, just touching his knee with her plumed fan. It was the lightest touch, but it thrilled him like a caress.
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What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.
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The visible world is a daily miracle, for those who have eyes and ears.
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Everything may be labelled- but everybody is not.
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In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.
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It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country.
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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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They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything.
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She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.
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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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Mothers and daughters are part of each other's consciousness, in different degrees and in a different way, but still with the mutual sense of something which has always been there. A real mother is just a habit of thought to her children.
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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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