Top 256 Quotes & Sayings by Edith Wharton

Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.

There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny.

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

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.

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

In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.

I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views.

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

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

The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

To be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it?

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.

He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.

The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.

Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.

My little dog - a heartbeat at my feet.

What's the use of making mysteries? It only makes people want to nose 'em out.

The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue.

Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.

Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.

I don't know that I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want some one who made it interesting.

The desire for symmetry, for balance, for rhythm in form as well as in sound, is one of the most inveterate of human instincts.

Life's just a perpetual piecing together of broken bits.

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.

There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it.

The visible world is a daily miracle, for those who have eyes and ears.

Only the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest know us enables us to live with them.

Nothing is more perplexing to a man than the mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions.

If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.

There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.

The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!

Each time you happen to me all over again.

But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.

Happiness is a work of art. Handle with care.

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.

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

Every house is a mad-house at some time or another.

Life is the saddest thing there is, next to death.

traditions that have lost their meaning are the hardest of all to destroy.

When a man says he doesn't understand a woman it's because he won't take the trouble.

There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul.

Life is made up of compromises.

The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances on any subject cross like interarching searchlights.

Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.

I believe I know the only cure, which is to make one’s center of life inside of one’s self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity—to decorate one’s inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone.

Some things are best mended by a break.

Our blindest impulses become evidence of perspicacity when they fall in with the course of events.

To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom.

We live in our own souls as in an unmapped region, a few acres of which we have cleared for our habitation; while of the nature of those nearest us we know but the boundaries that march with ours.

Life is always either; a tight -rope or a feather-bed . — Give me the tightrope.

One can remain alive ... if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity interested in big things and happy in small ways.

An education is like a crumbling building that needs constant upkeep with repairs and additions.

One of the great things about travel is you find out how many good, kind people there are.