They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything.
Edith WhartonRead
In our hurried world too little value is attached to the part of the connoisseur and dilettante.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote laments the lack of appreciation for those who have a refined taste and passion for the arts in our fast-paced society.
Edith Wharton highlights a societal trend where the roles of connoisseurs—those who appreciate and understand the finer details of art and culture—and dilettantes—those who engage casually with the arts—are undervalued. In today's hurried world, the deep appreciation for art, beauty, and culture is often overlooked, suggesting that a more thoughtful approach to the arts can enrich our lives and society as a whole.
Themes
ConnoisseurDilettanteArtAppreciationSociety
In practice
Example use cases
During an art gallery opening, a speaker could use the quote to emphasize the importance of appreciating art's nuances.
More from Edith Wharton
All quotes →They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods
Edith WhartonRead
Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
Edith WhartonRead
And I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.
Edith WhartonRead
As he paid the hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. 'After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other’s angles,' he reflected; but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep
Edith WhartonRead
There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it.
Edith WhartonRead
Similar quotes
I don't want you to write about what you know, because you don't know anything. I don't want to hear about your boyfriend or your grandma... I'm getting a little tired of 'my life story as fiction'. Please don't tell me about your little life - is there nothing larger? More important?
Toni MorrisonRead
Photography is a response that has to do with the momentary recognition of things. Suddenly you're alive. A minute later there was nothing there. I just watched it evaporate. You look one moment and there's everything, next moment it's gone. Photography is very philosophical.
Joel MeyerowitzRead
Prose is something that is persistent in staying in one place long enough to not only zero in on the dramatic effect of something that might have happened, or something that might have been seen, but also in watching how it played out and thinking about the cause and the effect.
Tracy K. SmithRead
The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.
Robert Penn WarrenRead
A good design is not a democratic consensus.
Edward De BonoRead
In a way, her strangeness, her naiveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like an artist with no art form, she became dangerous.
Toni MorrisonRead