661 Quotes by Edith Wharton

I wonder why rich people always grow fat I suppose it's because there's nothing to worry them.

Almost everybody in the neighborhood had ''troubles,'' frankly localized and specified; but only the chosen had ''complications.'' To have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death warrant. People struggled on for years wit

It is almost as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them proclaim that you think you are beautiful.

Inkstands and tea-cups are never as full as when one upsets them ...

It seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, even if breakable in prosperity, should be indissoluble in misfortune.

It is the omnipresent rush of water which give the Este Gardens their peculiar character. From the Anio, drawn up the hillside at incalculable cost and labour, a thousand rills gush downward, terrace by terrace, channeling the stone rails of the balusters, leaping from step to step, dripping into mossy conches, flashing in spray from the horns of sea-gods and the jaws of mythical monsters, or forcing themselves in irrepressible overflow down the ivy-matted banks.

whatever the uses of a room, they are seriously interfered with if it be not preserved as a world by itself.

The mere idea of a woman's appealing to her family to screen her husband's business dishonour was inadmisible, since it was the one thing that the Family, as an institution, could not do.

But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well been half the world apart.