There were in her at the moment two beings, one drawing deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration, the other gasping for air in a little black prison-house of fears. But gradually the captive’s gasps grew fainter, or the other paid less heed to them: the horizon expanded, the air grew stronger, and the free spirit quivered for flight.

— Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton Quotes

The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant outburst tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with a laugh.

— Edith Wharton

Her grey hair was arranged with precision, and her clothes looked excessively new and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were always black and tightly fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the kind of woman who wore jet at breakfast. Lily had never seen her when she was not cuirassed in shining black, with small tight boots, and an air of being packed and ready to start; yet she never started.

— Edith Wharton

She longed to be to him something more than a piece of sentient prettiness, a passing diversion to his eye and brain.

— Edith Wharton

If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself.

— Edith Wharton

She would not take more risks than she could help, and it was admiration, not love, that she wanted.

— Edith Wharton

In the joy of her gratified desires she wanted to make everybody about her happy. If only everyone would do as she wished she would never be unreasonable. She much preferred to see smiling faces about her, and her dread of the reproachful and dissatisfied countenance gave the measure of what she would do to avoid it.

— Edith Wharton

Was she beautiful – or was she only someone apart?

— Edith Wharton

The Fates seldom forget the bargains made with them, or fail to ask for compound interest.

— Edith Wharton

Her incapacity to recognise change made her children conceal their views from her as Archer concealed his;.

— Edith Wharton

The whole truth?” Miss Bart laughed. “What is truth? Where a woman is concerned, it’s the story that’s easiest to believe.

— Edith Wharton

Any personal entanglement might mean “bother,” and bother was the thing she most abhorred.

— Edith Wharton

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.

— Edith Wharton

Newland never seems to look ahead,” Mrs. Welland once ventured to complain to her daughter; and May answered serenely: “No; but you see it doesn’t matter, because when there’s nothing particular to do he reads a book.

— Edith Wharton

Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central Station his eyes had been refreshed.

— Edith Wharton

But in the dissolution of sentimental partnerships it is seldom that both associates are able to withdraw their funds at the same time; and Glennard gradually learned that he stood for the venture on which Mrs. Aubyn had irretrievably staked her all.

— Edith Wharton

The extravagance in dress – ” Miss Jackson began. “Sillerton took me to the first night of the Opera, and I can only tell you that Jane Merry’s dress was the only one I recognised from last year; and even that had had the front panel changed. Yet I know she got it out from Worth only two years ago, because my seamstress always goes in to make over her Paris dresses before she wears them.

— Edith Wharton

Yet what is deeper in a man than his tastes?

— Edith Wharton

Rich and idle and ornamental societies must produce many more such situations;.

— Edith Wharton

She stared, perhaps suspecting irony, as she always did beneath the unintelligible.

— Edith Wharton

Their types were familiar enough to Ralph, who had taken their measure in former wanderings, and come across their duplicates in every scene of continental idleness.

— Edith Wharton
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