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I've always shrunk from usurping the functions of Providence, and when I have to exercise them I decidedly prefer that it shouldn't be on an errand of destruction.

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
Always
Errands
Functions
Providence
Prefer
Shouldn
Usurping
Destruction
Shrunk
Function
Errand
Exercise
Decidedly

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True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. That new, that personal, vision is attained only by looking long enough at the object represented to make it the writer's own and the mind which would bring this secret gem to fruition must be able to nourish it with an accumulated wealth of knowledge and experience.
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There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.
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Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
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A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue.
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I don't believe in God, but I do believe in His saints.
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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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Her vivid smile was like a light held up to dazzle me.
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She threw back her head with a laugh that made her chins ripple like little waves.
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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.
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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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I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views.
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Everybody who does anything at all does too much.
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... caprice is as ruinous as routine.
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Since the Americans have ceased to have dyspepsia, they have lost the only thing that gave them any expression.
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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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It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.
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