Edith Wharton Quotes

Stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they have so much more to talk about.

What can you expect of a girl who was allowed to wear black satin at her coming-out ball?

An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English speaking audiences.

Mrs Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone.

Paying for what she doesn’t get rankles so dreadfully with Louisa; I can’t make her see that it’s one of the preliminary steps to getting what you haven’t paid for.

She keeps on being Queenly in her own room, with the door shut.

Miss Farish, who was accustomed, in the way of happiness, to such scant light as shone through the cracks of other people’s lives.

Of course, being fatally poor and dingy, it was wise of Gerty to have taken up philanthropy and symphony concerts.

She was like a disembodied spirit who took up a great deal of room.

If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself.

I despair of the Republic!… What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without a sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.