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Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton Quotes

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Famous Edith Wharton Quotes

“There was once a little girl who was so very intelligent that her parents feared that she would die. But an aged aunt, who had crossed the Atlantic in a sailing-vessel, said, 'My dears, let her marry the first man she falls in love with, and she will make such a fool of herself that it will probably save her life.”

MenFirstsLittlesSaidDiesFallGirlParentFoolIntelligentFalling In LoveSailingAuntVessel
Book:Collected Stories, 1891-1910
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“As he paid the hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. 'After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other’s angles,' he reflected; but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep”

FirstsMayLongWantedHouseDifficultWifeWorstMonthsSixPaidPressureTrainFinishedRefugeAngleSix MonthsAdaptationComfortingPlatitudesSharpnessMost Wanted
Book:The Age of Innocence
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“Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them." Mark Twain "...every literature, in its main lines, reflects the chief characteristics of the people for whom, and about whom, it is written.”

PeopleWayFirstsLyingValuesLiteratureLinesWrittenPoetBirthClaimsMarkChiefsCharacteristicsRepeatsOriginalityEpisodesIncidents
Author:Edith Wharton
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“If I could have made the change sooner I daresay I should never have given a thought to the literary delights of Paris or London; for life in the country is the only state which has always completely satisfied me, and I had never been allowed to gratify it, even for a few weeks at a time. Now I was to know the joys of six or seven months a year among fields and woods of my own, and the childish ecstasy of that first spring outing at Mamaroneck swept away all restlessness in the deep joy of communion with the earth.”

IfsKnowsShouldYearsFirstsMadeCountryStatesEarthJoyGivenMy OwnWeekFieldsMonthsSixSpringSevenDelightWoodsLondonSatisfiedParisIf I CouldEcstasyCommunionRestlessnessSwept AwaySeven Months
Author:Edith Wharton
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“The other producer of old age is habit: the deathly process of doing the same thing in the same way at the same hour day after day, first from carelessness, then from inclination, at last from cowardice or inertia. Luckily the inconsequent life is not the only alternative; for caprice is as ruinous as routine. 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.”

IfsWayWritingFirstsAgeLastsLife IsProcessHoursAliveHabitOld AgeProducersAlternativesRoutineCowardiceTrailsInclinationInertiaRutsIncessantlyCarelessnessCaprice
Author:Edith Wharton
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“My first few weeks in America are always miserable, because the tastes I am cursed with are all of a kind that cannot be gratified here, and I am not enough in sympathy with our gross public to make up for the lack on the aesthetic side. One's friends are delightful; but we are none of us Americans, we don't think or feel as the Americans do, we are the wretched exotics produced in a European glass-house, the most displaced and useless class on earth!”

ThinkingFeelsFirstsKindEnoughEarthAmericaHouseSidesClassWeekTasteGlassesMiserableUselessAestheticDelightfulGrossExileWretchedCursedGlass Houses
Author:Edith Wharton
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