top of page
Exlpore more Emotion quotes

"Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity."

"I have wished a bird would fly away,And not sing by my house all day;Have clapped my hands at him from the doorWhen it seemed as if I could bear no more.The fault must partly have been in me.The bird was not to blame for his keys.And of course there must be something wrongIn waiting to silence any song."

"She could smell damprot, high, sweet, and cloying. She could smell madness like dead vegetables in a dark cellar."

"How does it happen that a writer who's not even very good - and I can say that, I've read four or five of his books - gets to be in charge of the world's destiny? Or of the entire universe's?"If he's not very good, why didn't you stop at one?"Mrs. Tassenbaum smiled. "TouchA©. He is readable, I'll give him that - tells a good story..."

"He is talking to people in Toronto, trying to find out if I am guilty; but he won't find it out that way. He doesn't understand yet that guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that other have done for you."
Explore more quotes by Edith Wharton

"As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath."

"The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is the truth? Where a woman is concerned, it's the story that's easiest to believe. In this case it's a great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset's story than mine, because she has a big house and an opera box, and it's convenient to be on good terms with her."

"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."

"Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind of people who only ask one to pretend!"

"The fact that he and she understood each other without a word seemed to bring them nearer than any explanation would have done."

"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."

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

"It was horrible of a young girl to let herself be talked about; however unfounded the charges against her, she must be to blame for their having been made."
bottom of page