Edith Wharton Quotes - Page 5

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Once more it was borne in on him that marriage was not the safe anchorage he had been taught to think, but a voyage on uncharted seas.

Edith Wharton

Thinking, Sea, Literature

"The Age of Innocence".

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A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Edith Wharton

Definitions, Beloved, Classic

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An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

Edith Wharton

Music, Artist, Italian

The Age of Innocence ch. 1 (1920)

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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.

Edith Wharton

Time, Age, Leaves Of Grass

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My last page is always latent in my first; but the intervening windings of the way become clear only as I write.

Edith Wharton

Writing, Pages, Way

Edith Wharton (2013). “A Backward Glance”, p.142, Lulu Press, Inc

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It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.

Edith Wharton

Believe, Vanity, Self

Edith Wharton (2013). “House of Mirth and the Age of Innocence”, p.115, Simon and Schuster

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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.

Edith Wharton

Discovery, Innocence, Irritated

Edith Wharton (2016). “The Age of Innocence: American Literature”, p.28, VM eBooks

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I shan't be lonely now. I was lonely; I was afraid. But the emptiness and the darkness are gone; when I turn back into myself now I'm like a child going at night into a room where there's always a light.

Edith Wharton

Lonely, Children, Night

Edith Wharton (2015). “The Age of Innocence”, p.136, Xist Publishing

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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.

Edith Wharton

Girl, Falling In Love, Aunt

Edith Wharton (2001). “Collected Stories, 1891-1910”

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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.

Edith Wharton

Criticism, Glitter, Weak Points

Edith Wharton, Richard Warrington Baldwin Lewis, Nancy Lewis (1988). “The letters of Edith Wharton”, Macmillan Reference USA

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She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.

Edith Wharton

Fate, Civilization, Links

Edith Wharton (2015). “The House of Mirth”, p.8, Xist Publishing

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I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather exhausting; but when I see the stupid Italians I have met here, completely insensitive to their surroundings, and ignorant of the treasures of art and history among which they have grown up, I begin to think it is better to be an American, and bring to it all a mind and eye unblunted by custom.

Edith Wharton

Art, Stupid, Eye

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I despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such whining sallow women, such utter absence of the amenities, such crass food, crass manners, crass landscape!! What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without the sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.

Edith Wharton

Beauty, America, Despair

Edith Wharton, Richard Warrington Baldwin Lewis, Nancy Lewis (1988). “The letters of Edith Wharton”, Macmillan Reference USA

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Who's 'they'? Why don't you all get together and be 'they' yourselves?

Edith Wharton

Together, Get Together

Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.1960, Delphi Classics

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We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?

Edith Wharton

Life, People, Novel

Edith Wharton (2015). “The Age of Innocence”, p.67, Xist Publishing

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Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying for their board.

Edith Wharton

Leaving, Mind, Boards

Edith Wharton (2012). “Short Stories”, p.90, Courier Corporation

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It is almost as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them proclaim that you think you are beautiful.

Edith Wharton

Beautiful, Fashion, Stupid

Edith Wharton (2016). “The House of Mirth: Edith Wharton”, p.81, VM eBooks

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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.

Edith Wharton

Years, Long, Battle

Edith Wharton (2013). “House of Mirth and the Age of Innocence”, p.538, Simon and Schuster

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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.

Edith Wharton

Wealth Of Knowledge, Long, Mind

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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.

Edith Wharton

Art, Fear, Immature

The Writing of Fiction (1925) ch. 1

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Life is either always a tight-rope or a featherbed. Give me a tight-rope.

Edith Wharton

Inspirational, Life, Giving

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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

Usual, Alive, Mouths

Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.2048, Delphi Classics

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I am secretly afraid of animals.... I think it is because of the usness in their eyes, with the underlying not-usness which beliesit, and is so tragic a reminder of the lost age when we human beings branched off and left them: left them to eternal inarticulateness and slavery. Why? their eyes seem to ask us.

Edith Wharton

Eye, Animal, Thinking

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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

Book, House, Library

Edith Wharton (2013). “A Backward Glance”, p.216, Lulu Press, Inc

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Only the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest know us enables us to live with them. Love is the most impregnable refuge of self-esteem, and we hate the eye that reaches to our nakedness. Edith Wharton ~ The Touchstone

Edith Wharton

Hate, Self Esteem, Eye

Edith Wharton (1900). “The Greater Inclination: The Touchstone”

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Born: January 24, 1862
Died: August 11, 1937
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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