Edith Wharton

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

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

You thought I was a lovelorn mistress; and I was only an expensive prostitute.

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

The very good people didn't convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands — and yet you hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference.

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

..but it seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, if breakable in prosperity, should be indissoluble in misfortune.

It is the omnipresent rush of water which give the Este Gardens their peculiar character. From the Anio, drawn up the hillside at incalculable cost and labour, a thousand rills gush downward, terrace by terrace, channeling the stone rails of the balusters, leaping from step to step, dripping into mossy conches, flashing in spray from the horns of sea-gods and the jaws of mythical monsters, or forcing themselves in irrepressible overflow down the ivy-matted banks.

The true felicity of a lover of books is the luxurious turning of page by page, the surrender, not meanly abject, but deliberate and cautious, with your wits about you, as you deliver yourself into the keeping of the book. This I call reading.

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.

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

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

Staunch & faithful little lovers that they are, they give back a hundred fold every sign of love one ever gives them — & it mitigates the pang of losing them to know how very happy a little affection has made them .

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

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

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

It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.

Ah, good conversation - there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

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.

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

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.