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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.
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
First
Lottery
Thing
Missed
Something
Drawn
Would
Prize
Life
Flower
Like
Knew
Despairing
Thought
Unattainable
Firsts
Improbable
More quotes by Edith Wharton
I don't believe in God, but I do believe in His saints.
Edith Wharton
The effect produced by a short story depends almost entirely on its form.
Edith Wharton
I discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has helped me through several painful episodes.
Edith Wharton
Life is always either a tight -rope or a feather-bed . — Give me the tightrope.
Edith Wharton
There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.
Edith Wharton
True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.
Edith Wharton
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.
Edith Wharton
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
Edith Wharton
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.
Edith Wharton
It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.
Edith Wharton
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
Think what stupid things the people must have done with their money who say they're 'happier without'.
Edith Wharton
Archer reddened to the temples but dared not move or speak: it was as if her words had been some rare butterfly that the least motion might drive off on startled wings, but that might gather a flock if it were left undisturbed.
Edith Wharton
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
Edith Wharton
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.
Edith Wharton
The true felicity of a lover of books is the luxurious turning of page by page, the surrender, not meanly abject, but deliberate and cautious, with your wits about you, as you deliver yourself into the keeping of the book. This I call reading.
Edith Wharton
In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires.
Edith Wharton
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.
Edith Wharton
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.
Edith Wharton
He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.
Edith Wharton