Edith Wharton
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.Collection: Inspirational
My little dog - a heartbeat at my feet.Collection: Pet
True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.Collection: Imagination
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.Collection: Freedom
Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.Collection: Experience
There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny.Collection: Imagination
The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.Collection: Money
Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.
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.
Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.
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.
The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.
Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.
If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.
I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.
To be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it?
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.
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.
The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.
He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.
The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.
A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue.
After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
What's the use of making mysteries? It only makes people want to nose 'em out.
In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.
One can remain alive ... if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity interested in big things and happy in small ways.Collection: Life And Death
Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.Collection: Half
The visible world is a daily miracle, for those who have eyes and ears.Collection: Eye
I believe I know the only cure, which is to make one’s center of life inside of one’s self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity—to decorate one’s inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone.Collection: Believe
Some things are best mended by a break.Collection: Quitting
Happiness is a work of art. Handle with care.Collection: Happiness
To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom.Collection: Wisdom
If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.Collection: Happiness
Nothing is more perplexing to a man than the mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions.Collection: Men
Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.Collection: Carpe Diem
Life's just a perpetual piecing together of broken bits.Collection: Broken
The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!Collection: Real
But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.Collection: Doors
An education is like a crumbling building that needs constant upkeep with repairs and additions.Collection: Needs
The difference is that these young people take it for granted that they're going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always took it for granted that we shouldn't. Only, I wonder—the thing one's so certain of in advance: can it ever make one's heart beat as wildly?Collection: Heart
There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it.Collection: Happiness
There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul.Collection: Friendship
When a man says he doesn't understand a woman it's because he won't take the trouble.Collection: Men
Each time you happen to me all over again.Collection: Love
One of the great things about travel is you find out how many good, kind people there are.Collection: Inspirational
In our hurried world too little value is attached to the part of the connoisseur and dilettante.Collection: Happiness
Life is always either; a tight -rope or a feather-bed . — Give me the tightrope.Collection: Life
She had been bored all afternoon by Percy Gryce... but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptibilities, and all on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her for life.Collection: Boredom