"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."
"She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness about her."
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Source: Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.495, Delphi Classics
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"I despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such whining sallow women, such utter absence of the amenities, such crass food, crass manners, crass landscape!! What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without the sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast."
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