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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

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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
Young
Married
Disgusting
Steadying
Men
Duty
Charming
Aimless
Rather
Ending
Comradeship
Peace
Stability
Disgust
Moment
Perfectly
Premature
Girl
Mets
Adventures
Sense
Adventure
Represented
Moments
Series
Sentimental

More quotes by Edith Wharton

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The early mist had vanished and the fields lay like a silver shield under the sun. It was one of the days when the glitter of winter shines through a pale haze of spring.
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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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Life is made up of compromises.
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In the rotation of crops there was a recognized season for wild oats but they were not sown more than once.
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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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If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.
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... how I understand that love of living, of being in this wonderful, astounding world even if one can look at it only through theprison bars of illness and suffering! Plus je vois, the more I am thrilled by the spectacle.
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Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
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It was too late for happiness - but not too late to be helped by the thought of what I had missed. That is all I haved lived on - don't take it from me now
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Her vivid smile was like a light held up to dazzle me.
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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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I swear I only want to hear about you, to know what you've been doing. It's a hundred years since we've met-it may be another hundred before we meet again.
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One of the first obligations of art is to make all useful things beautiful.
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The effect produced by a short story depends almost entirely on its form.
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He bent and laid his lips on her hands, which were cold and lifeless. She drew them away, and he turned to the door, found his coat and hat under the faint gas-light of the hall, and plunged out into the winter night bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate.
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Inkstands and tea-cups are never as full as when one upsets them.
Edith Wharton
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But marriage is one long sacrifice.... Chapter 21, Medora Manson speaking to Newland Archer
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There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.
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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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He had her in his arms, her face like a wet flower at his lips, and all their vain terrors shriveling up like ghosts at sunrise.
Edith Wharton