661 Quotes by Edith Wharton

Their long years together had shown him that it did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of ugly appetites.

As he paid the hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. 'After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other’s angles,' he reflected; but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep

If you're as detached as that, why does the obsolete institution of marriage survive with you?"Oh, it still has its uses. One couldn't be divorced without it.

There are two ways of spreading light: to be The candle or the mirror that reflects it.

What right had she to dream the dreams of loveliness?

What do you call the weak point?" He paused. "The fact that the average American looks down on his wife.

We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed until we drop.

I can’t bear to see myself in my own thoughts—I hate ugliness, you know

Some human happiness is a landlocked lake; but the Grancys’ was an open sea, stretching a buoyant and inimitable surface to the voyaging interests of life. There was room to spare on those waters for all our separate ventures; and always, beyond the sunset, a mirage of the fortunate isles toward which our prows were bent.