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...and wondering where he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not.

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
Read
Give
Giving
Cleverest
Wondering
Liars
Clever
Details
Wonder

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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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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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Her failure was a useful preliminary to success.
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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.
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The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.
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The only thing to do is to hug one's friends tight and do one's job.
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Don't you ever mind, she asked suddenly, not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?
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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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I discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has helped me through several painful episodes.
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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 wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do not inevitably become mere blurs to each other's vision.
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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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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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It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country.
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Habit is necessary. It is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive ... one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in the big things, and happy in small ways.
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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.
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The visible world is a daily miracle, for those who have eyes and ears.
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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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Life is always either a tight -rope or a feather-bed . — Give me the tightrope.
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