Edith Wharton Quotes
Assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis, About.com GuideEdith Wharton (1862 - 1937)
• Life is either always a tight-rope or a feather bed. Give me the tight-rope.
• It was harder to drown at sunrise than in darkness.
• She was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company.
• Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.
• If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.
• There is no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.
• 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.
• Most wrong-doing works, on the whole, less mischief than its useless confession.
• The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.
• She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making. [The House of Mirth]
• The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.
• Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.
• Time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters; but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallup.
• In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.
