Quotes about Perception
These Americans, under their forthcoming manner, their surface-gush, as some might call it, have an odd reticence about what goes on underneath.
— Edith Wharton
Brains & culture seem non-existent from one end of the social scale to the other, & half the morons yell for filth, & the other half continue to put pants on the piano-legs.
— Edith Wharton
the same quality of making other standards non-existent by ignoring them. This attribute was common to most of Lily's set: they had a force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own range of perception.
— Edith Wharton
they had a force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own range of perception.
— Edith Wharton
The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is truth?
— Edith Wharton
and I know how names can alter the colour of beliefs.
— Edith Wharton
What do you call the weak point? He paused. The fact that the average American looks down on his wife.
— Edith Wharton
It seems so to me, said his wife, as if she were producing a new thought.
— Edith Wharton
the things that she took for granted gave the measure of those she had rebelled against.
— Edith Wharton
He felt himself flung back on all the ugly uncertainties from which he thought he had cast loose forever. After all, what did he know of her life? Only as much as she had chosen to show him, and measured by the world's estimate, how little that was!
— Edith Wharton
He was not blind to her crudity and her limitations, but they were a part of her grace and her persuasion. Diverse et ondoyante—so he had seen her from the first.
— Edith Wharton
The drawing-room door opened, and two high-stocked and ample-coated young men came in—two Jim Ralstons, so to speak. Delia had never before noticed how much her husband and his cousin Joe were alike: it made her feel how justified she was in always thinking of the Ralstons collectively.
— Edith Wharton