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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
Useful
Obligation
Art
Beautiful
Firsts
First
Make
Things
Obligations

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Women ought to be free - as free as we are,' he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.
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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.
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To visit Morocco is still like turning the pages of some illuminated Persian manuscript all embroidered with bright shapes and subtle lines.
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But marriage is one long sacrifice.... Chapter 21, Medora Manson speaking to Newland Archer
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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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And all the while, I suppose, he thought, real people were living somewhere, and real things happening to them.
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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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traditions that have lost their meaning are the hardest of all to destroy.
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I can't love you unless I give you up.
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I'm not much interested in travelling scholarships for women - or in fact in scholarships, tout court! - they'd much better stay at home and mind the baby. Still less am I interested in scholarships for female Yids.
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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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The effect produced by a short story depends almost entirely on its form.
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In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires.
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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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The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.
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[I]t's safer to be fond of dangerous people.
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Everything may be labelled- but everybody is not.
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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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After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
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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.
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