661 Quotes by Edith Wharton

We can’t behave like people in novels, though, can we?

If only we’d stop trying to be happy we’d have a pretty good time.

But in another moment she seemed to have descended from her womanly eminence to helpless and timorous girlhood; and he understood that her courage and initiative were all for others, and that she had none for herself. It was evident that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied composure betrayed, and that at his first word of reassurance she had dropped back into the usual, as a too adventurous child takes refuge in its mother’s arms.

Even now, however, she was not always happy. She had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them.

I’m afraid I’m an incorrigible life-lover, life-wonderer, and adventurer.

The affair, in short, had been of the kind that most of the young men of his age had been through and emerged from with calm consciences and an undisturbed belief in the abysmal distinction between the women one loved and respected and those one enjoyed – and pitied.

That’s Lily all over, you know: she works like a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she ought to be reaping the harvest she over-sleeps herself or goes off on a picnic.

And how can anyone give you happiness who hasn’t got it himself?

The conventionality of the tribe is far more important than the happiness of the individual. In fact, the happiness of the individual ideally should rest in perpetrating the conventionality of the tribe.