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One of the first obligations of art is to make all useful things beautiful.

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
Make
Things
Obligations
Useful
Obligation
Art
Beautiful
Firsts

More quotes by Edith Wharton

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[B]ut he had lived in a world in which, as he said, no one who loved ideas need hunger mentally.
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The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!
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The difference is that these young people take it for granted that they're going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always took it for granted that we shouldn't. Only, I wonder—the thing one's so certain of in advance: can it ever make one's heart beat as wildly?
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I wonder why rich people always grow fat I suppose it's because there's nothing to worry them.
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...and wondering where he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not.
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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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In all the arts abundance seems to be one of the surest signs of vocation.
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Mothers and daughters are part of each other's consciousness, in different degrees and in a different way, but still with the mutual sense of something which has always been there. A real mother is just a habit of thought to her children.
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One of the great things about travel is you find out how many good, kind people there are.
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Think what stupid things the people must have done with their money who say they're 'happier without'.
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There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
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He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.
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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 discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has helped me through several painful episodes.
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Yes, you have been away a very long time.' 'Oh, centuries and centuries so long,' she said, 'that I'm sure I'm dead and buried and this dear old place is heaven.
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Life is always either a tight -rope or a feather-bed . — Give me the tightrope.
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But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well been half the world apart.
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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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Everything may be labelled- but everybody is not.
Edith Wharton
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In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.
Edith Wharton