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The value of books is proportionate to what may be called their plasticity -- their quality of being all things to all men, of being diversely moulded by the impact of fresh forms of thought.

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
Values
Proportionate
Form
Fresh
Thought
Forms
May
Impact
Book
Value
Things
Called
Men
Books
Moulded
Quality
Plasticity

More quotes by Edith Wharton

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There is too much sour grapes for my taste in the present American attitude. The time to denounce the bankers was when we were all feeding off their gold plate not now! At present they have not only my sympathy but my preference. They are the last representatives of our native industries.
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I don't believe in God, but I do believe in His saints.
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... there are spines to which the immobility of worship is not a strain.
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The only thing to do is to hug one's friends tight and do one's job.
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Their long years together had shown him that it did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of ugly appetites.
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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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...and wondering where he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not.
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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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There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.
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Then stay with me a little longer,' Madame Olenska said in a low tone, just touching his knee with her plumed fan. It was the lightest touch, but it thrilled him like a caress.
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Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.
Edith Wharton
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I can't love you unless I give you up.
Edith Wharton
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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.
Edith Wharton
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In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.
Edith Wharton
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In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires.
Edith Wharton
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... even in houses commonly held to be 'booky' one finds, nine times out of ten, not a library but a book-dump.
Edith Wharton
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Ah, the poverty, the miserable poverty, of any love that lies outside of marriage, of any love that is not a living together, a sharing of all!
Edith Wharton
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The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.
Edith Wharton
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Life is always either a tight -rope or a feather-bed . — Give me the tightrope.
Edith Wharton
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A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue.
Edith Wharton