"My last page is always latent in my first; but the intervening windings of the way become clear only as I write."
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Quote collection
Edith Wharton quotes (page 5 of 13)
254 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity."
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"The moment my eyes fell on him, I was content."
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"The visible world is a daily miracle for those who have eyes and ears; and I still warm hands thankfully at the old fire, though every year it is fed with the dry wood of more old memories."
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"Some things are best mended by a break."
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"The visible world is a daily miracle, for those who have eyes and ears."
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"The only thing to do is to hug one's friends tight and do one's job."
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"There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it."
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"Everybody who does anything at all does too much."
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"We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?"
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"I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather exhausting; but when I see the stupid Italians I have met here, completely insensitive to their surroundings, and ignorant of the treasures of art and history among which they have grown up, I begin to think it is better to be an American, and bring to it all a mind and eye unblunted by custom."
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"To be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it?"
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"The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing."
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"She seemed to melt against him in her terror, and he caught her in his arms, held her fast there, felt her lashes beat his cheek like netted butterflies."
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"The value of books is proportionate to what may be called their plasticity -- their quality of being all things to all men, of being diversely moulded by the impact of fresh forms of thought."
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"The early mist had vanished and the fields lay like a silver shield under the sun. It was one of the days when the glitter of winter shines through a pale haze of spring."
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"The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted this submergence as philosohpically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the centre of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation."
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"What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath."
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"His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen."
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"... naturalness is not always consonant with taste."
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