661 Quotes by Edith Wharton

When people ask for time, it’s always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesn’t take half as long to say.

Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn’t any.

The stage was thought to have a shaping influence, for the most part a bad one, on youthful character and conduct in much the way television is thought to have in our day.

I’m improvident: I live in the moment when I’m happy.

But we’re so different, you know: she likes being good and I like being happy.

The only thing to do is to hug one’s friends tight and do one’s job.

Just so; she’d even feel aggrieved. But why? Because it’s against the custom of the country. And whose fault is that? The man’s again – I don’t mean Ralph I mean the genus he belongs to: homo sapiens, Americanus. Why haven’t we taught our women to take an interest in our work? Simply because we don’t take enough interest in THEM.

There were in her at the moment two beings, one drawing deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration, the other gasping for air in a little black prison-house of fears. But gradually the captive’s gasps grew fainter, or the other paid less heed to them: the horizon expanded, the air grew stronger, and the free spirit quivered for flight.

Was it love, she wondered, or a mere fortuitous combination of happy thoughts and sensations?