661 Quotes by Edith Wharton

Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?

If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.

Each time you happen to me all over again.

There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul.

...the people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn't it fairer to look at them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or intelligently, according to the capacity of the user?

There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there’s only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time.

I am horribly poor—and very expensive. I must have a great deal of money.

They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods.

You mustn't tell your dreams. Miss Testvalley says nothing bores people so much as being told other people's dreams. Nan said nothing, but an iron gate seemed to clang shut in her - the gate that was so often slammed by careless hands. As if anyone could be bored by such dreams as hers!