Quotes from Edith Wharton
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
— Edith Wharton
Believe me, all of you, the best way to help the places we live in is to be glad we live there.
— Edith Wharton
Little as she was addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from the empty noises of her life.
— Edith Wharton
He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled dreams of an inarticulate lifetime.
— Edith Wharton
and I know how names can alter the colour of beliefs.
— 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
seemed like that moment of pause and arrest when the warm fluidity of youth is chilled into its final shape. He
— Edith Wharton
Ah, don't let us undo what you've done!' she cried. 'I can't go back now to that other way of thinking. I can't love you unless I give you up.
— Edith Wharton
And meanwhile there was the world of wonders within him. As a boy at the sea-side, Ralph, between tides, had once come on a cave—a secret inaccessible place with glaucous lights, mysterious murmurs, and a single shaft of communication with the sky. He
— Edith Wharton
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
He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.
— Edith Wharton
The bounds of a personality are not reproducible by a sharp black line, but...each of us flows imperceptibly into adjacent people and things.
— Edith Wharton