A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue.
Edith Wharton

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
Edith Wharton

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
Edith Wharton

Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.
Edith Wharton

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.
Edith Wharton

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

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

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
Edith Wharton

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.
Edith Wharton

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


In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.
Edith Wharton

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

Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.
Edith Wharton

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

My little dog - a heartbeat at my feet.
Edith Wharton

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
Edith Wharton

Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.
Edith Wharton

The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.
Edith Wharton

The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.
Edith Wharton

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