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I despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such whining sallow women, such utter absence of the amenities, such crass food, crass manners, crass landscape!! What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without the sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.

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
Sense
Absence
Whining
America
Horror
Bananas
Women
Despair
Utter
Without
Eating
Breakfast
Whole
Nation
Republic
Food
Manners
Dreariness
Beauty
Landscape
Amenities
Nations
Developing
Crass

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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.
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It is almost as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them proclaim that you think you are beautiful.
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No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity.
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... caprice is as ruinous as routine.
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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.
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True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.
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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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Until the raw ingredients of a pudding make a pudding, I shall never believe that the raw material of sensation and thought can make a work of art without the cook's intervening.
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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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Her vivid smile was like a light held up to dazzle me.
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Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying for their board.
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Overhead hung a summer sky furrowed with the rush of rockets and from the east a late moon, pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the coast, sent across the bay a shaft of brightness which paled to ashes in the red glitter of the illuminated boats.
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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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