661 Quotes by Edith Wharton

No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity. But brilliant young ladies, a little blinded by their own effulgence, are apt to forget that the modest satellite drowned in their light is still performing its own revolutions and generating heat at its own rate.

But they're too shy to speak when my mother-in-law doesn't; sometimes they open their mouths to begin, but they never get as far as the first sentence. You must get used to an ocean of silence, and just swim about in it as well as you can.

There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level, and surveys the long windings of destiny.

She had been bored all afternoon by Percy Gryce... but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptibilities, and all on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her for life.

How impatience men are! All Jack has to do to get everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry him; whereas I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance, as if I were going through an intricate dance where one misstep would throw me hopelessly out of time.

The words came out slowly, haltingly, as if they had cost him a struggle. Nan had noticed before now that anger was too big a garment for him; it always hung on him in uneasy folds.

She was something he knew he had missed: the flower of life.

Cât de mult se vor putea cunoaște unul pe altul, când datoria lui de om "cumsecade" era să nu-i destăinuie trecutul, iar a ei, ca fată de măritat, să nu aibă nici un fel de trecut de ascuns?

- ... e o fată delicioasă: n-am mai văzut o a doua ființă atât de deșteaptă și de draguță. Ești tare îndrăgostit de ea?Newland Archer râse roșind:- Cât poate fi un bărbat.