Edith Wharton

“הרעיון של הצלחה הוא חופש אישי.”

“כאשר אנשים מבקשים פסק זמן, זה תמיד כדי לומר 'לא'.”

“היא ידעה כי החיים הם היועץ האמיתי היחיד, וכי חוכמה שאיננה נרכשת באמצעות התנסות איננה הופכת לחלק של אושיות המוסר.”

“אחרי הכול, אנו מכירים היטב את מגרעותינו, ואנו משתוממים כאשר המבקרים מתעלמים מהן, וממציאים מגרעות אחרות שאינן קיימות.”

“עד מתי נחשוב שאנו חייבים להיות 'אמריקנים' לפני שנהיה מתורבתים, נאורים ואנושיים?”

“קיימות שתי דרכים להפיץ אור: להיות נר או להיות ראי המשקף אותו.”

“אילו היינו חדלים מלנסות להיות מאושרים, היינו הופכים לכאלה.”

“מקוריות אמיתית איננה צורה חדשה של כתיבה, אלא השקפת עולם חדשה.”

“If you're as detached as that, why does the obsolete institution of marriage survive with you?"Oh, it still has its uses. One couldn't be divorced without it.”

“A sense of having been decoyed by some world-old conspiracy into this bondage of body and soul filled her with despair. If marriage was the slow life-long acquittal of a debt contracted in ignorance, then marriage was a crime against human nature.”

“Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?”

“I don't want them to think that we dress like savages,' she replied, with a scorn that Pocahontas might have resented; and he was struck again by the religious reverence of even the most unworldly American women for the social advantages of dress.'It's their armour,' he thought, 'their defence against the unknown, and their defiance of it.' And he understood for the first time the earnestness with which May, who was incapable of tying a ribbon in her hair to charm him, had gone through the solemn rite of selecting and ordering her extensive wardrobe.”

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

“The visible world is a daily miracle, for those who have eyes and ears.”

“Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.”

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

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

“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.”

“High PastureCome up--come up: in the dim vale belowThe autumn mist muffles the fading trees,But on this keen hill-pasture, though the breezeHas stretched the thwart boughs bare to meet the snow,Night is not, autumn is not--but the flowOf vast, ethereal and irradiate seas,Poured from the far world's flaming boundariesIn waxing tides of unimagined glow.And to that height illumined of the mindhe calls us still by the familiar way,Leaving the sodden tracks of life behind,Befogged in failure, chilled with love's decay--Showing us, as the night-mists upward wind,How on the heights is day and still more day.”

“You mustn't tell your dreams. Miss Testvalley says nothing bores people so much as being told other people's dreams. Nan said nothing, but an iron gate seemed to clang shut in her - the gate that was so often slammed by careless hands. As if anyone could be bored by such dreams as hers!”