661 Quotes by Edith Wharton

...but these backwaters of existence sometimes breed, in their sluggish depths, strange acuities of emotion... ("Afterward")

...есть много способов ответить на письмо — и, как ни странно, писать — это не мой способ. (Ник Лэнсинг - Сюзи Бранч)

She yearned to be admired, and feared to be insulted; and yet seemed tragically conscious that she was destined to miss both these extremes of sensation, or to enjoy them only at second hand in the experiences of her more privileged friends.

The patch of lawn before it had relapsed into a hayfield; but to the left an overgrown box-garden full of dahlias and rusty rose-bushes encircled a ghostly summer-house of trellis-work that had once been white, surmounted by a wooden Cupid who had lost his bow and arrow but continued to take ineffectual aim.

Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the "new people" whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to

Seems to me it all boils down to one thing. Was this fellow we're supposing about under any obligation to the other party - the one he was trying to buy the property from?'Ralph hesitated. 'Only the obligation recognized between decent men to deal with each other decently.'Mr. Spragg listened to this with the suffering air of a teacher compelled to simplify upon his simplest question.

The motions of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the branches

Folly is as often justified of her children as wisdom.

What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?