Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton
Edith Whartonwas a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 January 1862
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Though he turned the pages with the sensuous joy of the book-lover, he did not know what he was reading, and one book after another dropped from his hand. Suddenly, among them, he lit on a small volume of verse which he had ordered because the name had attracted him: "The House of Life." He took it up, and found himself plunged in an atmosphere unlike any he had ever breathed in books; so warm, so rich, and yet so ineffebly tender, that it gave a new and haunting beauty to the most elementary of human passions.
...every literature, in its main lines, reflects the chief characteristics of the people for whom, and about whom, it is written.
The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.
Then stay with me a little longer,' Madame Olenska said in a low tone, just touching his knee with her plumed fan. It was the lightest touch, but it thrilled him like a caress.
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.
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.
Little as she was addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from the empty noises of her life.
She would not have put herself out so much to say so little.
One cares so little for the style in which one's praises are written.
She threw back her head with a laugh that made her chins ripple like little waves.
Do you know-I hardly remembered you? Hardly remembered me? I mean: how shall I explain? I-it's always so. Each time you happen to me all over again.
In our hurried world too little value is attached to the part of the connoisseur and dilettante.
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.