661 Quotes by Edith Wharton

Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree oneself to possess. It must be built up imperceptibly and laboriously out of a succession of small efforts to meet definite objects, out of the facing of daily difficulties instead of cleverly eluding them, or shifting their burden on others.

He turned to me, full of a terrifying benevolence.

I want to put my hand out and touch you. I want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you’re sick and when you’re lonesome.

I don’t know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.

But I’ve caught it already. I am dead – I’ve been dead for months and months.

Obviously he had aspired too high, or been too impatient; but it was his nature to be aspiring and impatient, and if he was to succeed it must be on the lines of his own character.

Denis Eady was the son of Michael Eady, the ambitious Irish grocer, whose suppleness and effrontery had given Starkfield its first notion of “smart” business methods, and whose new brick store testified to the success of the attempt. His son seemed likely to follow in his steps, and was meanwhile applying the same arts to the conquest of the Starkfield maidenhood. Hitherto Ethan Frome had been content to think him a mean fellow; but now he positively invited a horse-whipping.

Oh, Gerty, I wasn’t meant to be good.

Women ought to be free – as free as we are,′ he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.