Edith Wharton (1862 – 1937)
American novelist, short story writer and designer.
No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity.
Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?
There's no such thing as old age; there is only sorrow.
The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.
Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.
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.
There are two ways of spreading light: to be
The candle or the mirror that reflects it.