Edith Quotes

His life, for years past, had been mainly a succession of resigned adaptations, and he had learned, before dealing practically with his embarrassments, to extract from most of them a small tribute of amusement.
("The Triumph Of The Night") ~ Edith Wharton

The most precious thing a human being has to give is time. There is so very little of it, after all, in a life. ~ Edith Schaeffer

When he takes me in his arms, and speaks to me softly, I see the world through rose-colored glasses. ~ Edith Piaf

Acquiring certificates without putting the mind to work is a complete waste of education. ~ Endale Edith

Who's 'they'? Why don't you all get together and be 'they' yourselves? ~ Edith Wharton

A shadow? Oh, darling, all that lives in this house are shadows and reflections and creaks and groans. So you'd better soothe that boundless imagination of yours from now on. Edith ~ Nancy Holder

Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her
of enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated
he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch. ~ Edith Wharton

Hot water is my native element. I was in it as a baby, and I have never seemed to get out of it ever since. ~ Edith Sitwell

She was a great and insatiable reader, surprisingly well acquainted with the classics of literature, and unexpectedly lavish in the purchase of books. Her neighbours never forgot to mention, in describing her, the awe-inspiring fact that she 'took in the English Times and the Saturday Review, and read every word of them,' but it was hinted that the bookshelves that her own capable hands had put up in her bedroom held a large proportion of works of fiction of a startlingly advanced kind, 'and,' it was generally added in tones of mystery, 'many of them French. ~ Edith Somerville

Couture has copied my things for years, in addition to countless other costume designers, claiming theirs were the original ideas. It's all part of the business, unfortunately. ~ Edith Head

My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life. ~ Edith Sitwell

Picasso was a delightful, kindly, friendly, simple little man. When I met him he was extremely excited and overjoyed that his mother-in-law had just died, and he was looking forward to the funeral. ~ Edith Sitwell

I'm dying, but otherwise I'm in very good health. ~ Edith Sitwell

And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up there!"
He paused a moment. "Come up and see," he suggested. "I can give you a cup of tea in no time - and you won't meet any bores."
Her colour deepened - she still had the art of blushing at the right time - but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was made.
"Why not? It's too tempting - I'll take the risk," she declared.
"Oh, I'm not dangerous," he said in the same key.
In truth, he had never liked her as well as at that moment. He knew she had accepted without afterthought: he could never be a factor in her calculations, and there was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in the spontaneity of her consent. ~ Edith Wharton

The difference between a fairy tale and a sea tale? A fairy tale starts with "Once upon a time". A sea tale starts with " This ain't no $hit"! ~ Edith Widder

Corinne suggested a different reason, indicating that her dying father had expressed concern about Theodore's intimacy with Edith, given Charles Carow's fiscal and temperamental instability. If Theodore discussed the issue with Edith that night, he might well have triggered the volatility that he would obscurely explain to Bamie as a clash of tempers "that were far from being of the best. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

I think I have the best job in the world. Seventy-one percent of the planet is covered by water, we've explored less than five percent of the ocean, and there are so many fabulous discoveries that have yet to be made. ~ Edith Widder

Cowardly thoughts, anxious hesitation, Womanish timidity, timorous complaints Won't keep misery away from you And will not set you free. ~ Edith Hahn Beer

Since the Americans have ceased to have dyspepsia, they have lost the only thing that gave them any expression. ~ Edith Wharton

I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty ... But I am too busy thinking about myself. ~ Edith Sitwell

Relax," Edith says. "The perfect name will come to you in time." Which is when Gogol announces, "There's no such thing." "No such thing as what?" Astrid says. "There's no such thing as a perfect name. I think that human beings should be allowed to name themselves when they turn eighteen," he adds. "Until then, pronouns. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

Why? So you can still qualify for assistance? Your family is gaming the system?"

"No." Diana had always hated when people said this about her family. The bosses who made her dad list a payroll company as his employer, they gamed the system. The assholes who convinced her parents to take out both a second mortgage and a HELOC in 2006 gamed the system. The employers who would never give Edith enough hours for benefits gamed the system. But ask a lot of people, and they'd tell you it's people like her grandma who game the system. They'd tell you that an old woman who's worked hard every day of her life and still struggles to get by is a malignant vacuum for their personal tax dollars, and a blight on their lives as free Americans. "We're just trying to live. ~ J. Ryan Stradal

James, at the beginning of his friendship with Edith Wharton. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Their voices rose and fell, like the murmuring of two fountains answering each other across a garden full of flowers. At length, with a certain tender impatience, he turned to her and said: 'Love, why should we linger here? All eternity lies before us. Let us go down into that beautiful country together and make a home for ourselves on some blue hill above the shining river'. ~ Edith Wharton

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. ~ Edith Wharton

The turnings of life seldon show a sign-post; or rather, though the sign is always there, it is usually placed some distance back, like the notices that give warning of a bad hill or a level railway-crossing. ~ Edith Wharton

As ever, books remained a medium through which Theodore and Edith connected and interpreted larger world. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

She knew herself by heart too, and was sick of the old story. ~ Edith Wharton

Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury. It was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in. ~ Edith Wharton

This is a glorious biography ... The time is ripe for a new biography of Edith Wharton of this intimacy and on this scale ... Lee the biographer pursues her subject down every winding corridor, into every hidden passage and dark corner ... Her critical exploration of Edith Whartons work is dazzlingly assured ... A feat of exhaustive research, and finely tuned to Whartons creative achievement at the same time ... [Wharton] could scarcely have failed to be impressed by ... its artistic sympathy, its sonorous depths, and its soaring conception. ~ Mark Bostridge

Ethan looked at her with loathing. She was no longer the listless creature who had lived at his side in a state of sullen self-absorption, but a mysterious alien presence, an evil energy secreted from the long years of silent brooding. ~ Edith Wharton

My first few weeks in America are always miserable, because the tastes I am cursed with are all of a kind that cannot be gratified here, and I am not enough in sympathy with our gross public to make up for the lack on the aesthetic side. One's friends are delightful; but we are none of us Americans, we don't think or feel as the Americans do, we are the wretched exotics produced in a European glass-house, the most displaced and useless class on earth! ~ Edith Wharton

The allegation that English girls had no conversation must be true; but theirs was a SPEAKING silence. Their eyes and smiles were eloquent! She hoped it would teach their own girls that they need not chatter like magpies. ~ Edith Wharton

Any rapidly enacted episode ... should be seen through only one pair of eyes. ~ Edith Wharton

Of course he's good-he's too stupid to be bad ~ Edith Wharton

It is not necessary to have an extravagant food budget in order to serve things with variety and tastefully cooked. It is not necessary to have expensive food on the plates before they can enter the dining room as things of beauty in colour and texture. Food should be served with real care as to the colour and texture on the plates, as well as with imaginative taste. This is where artistic talent and aesthetic expression and fulfillment come in. ~ Edith Schaeffer

For me, learning that only I can do what I can do the way I can it meant overthrowing the compulsive achiever in me, who was always chasing more and more pieces of paper in the hops of affirming my worth. ~ Edith Eger

In our hurried world too little value is attached to the part of the connoisseur and dilettante. ~ Edith Wharton

This conversation revealed to Odo a third conception of the religious idea. In Piedmont religion imposed itself as a military discipline, the enforced duty of the Christian citizen to the heavenly state; to the Duke it was a means of purchasing spiritual immunity from the consequences of bodily weakness; to the Bishop, it replaced the panem et circenses of ancient Rome. Where, in all this, was the share of those whom Christ had come to save? Where was Saint Francis's devotion to his heavenly bride, the Lady Poverty? Though here and there a good parish priest like Crescenti ministered to the temporal wants of the peasantry, it was only the free-thinker and the atheist who, at the risk of life and fortune, laboured for their moral liberation. Odo listened with a saddened heart, thinking, as he followed his host through the perfumed shade of the gardens, and down ~ Edith Wharton

My wife, Edith, and I both have good health - and she's been very tolerant. ~ Darrell Royal

Archer looked down with wonder at the familiar spectacle. It surprised him that life should be going on in the old way when his own reactions to it had so completely changed. ~ Edith Wharton

I think you have to pay for love with bitter tears. ~ Edith Piaf

My paper has to be very long and complex," I said. "I shall cite all the great thinkers - Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud." "What about Adolf Hitler?" "Oh, him. He's not a thinker. He's just a ranter and raver." "There may come a time," said Pepi, "when people cannot tell the difference." "Impossible," I solemnly predicted. "I have read Hitler's book Mein Kampf and also some works by his colleague Herr Alfred Rosenberg because I am a fair-minded, objective person and I believe one should always hear out all sides before making a decision, and so I can tell you from firsthand knowledge that these men are idiots. Their ideas about how the Jews have poisoned their so-called superior Aryan race and caused all of Germany's troubles are utter nonsense. No intelligent person could possibly believe them. Hitler is laughable. He will soon disappear." "Just like all your old boyfriends," Pepi said with his sly smile. ~ Edith Hahn Beer

When faith is supported by facts or by logic it ceases to be faith. ~ Edith Hamilton

Don't they always go from bad to worse? There's no turning back--your
old self rejects you, and shuts you out. ~Lilly Bart ~ Edith Wharton

Something always happened, you see. A Yiddish song on Hanukkah, a British rabbi's prayer on the radio, some kindness on a train or in the street that reminded me, no matter how far I retreated, no matter how deep into self-denial my fear drove me, that the Jews would always be my people and I would always belong to them. ~ Edith Hahn Beer

Hotel Du Lac
Edith, once again anonymous, and accepting her anonymity, made an appropriately inconspicuous exit. And, sitting in the deserted salon, the first to arrive from the dining room, she felt her precarious dignity hard-pressed and about to succumb in the light of her earlier sadness. The pianist, sitting down to play, gave her a brief nod. She nodded back, and thought how limited her means of expression had become: nodding to the pianist or to Mme de Bonneuil, listening to Mrs Pusey, using a disguised voice in the novel she was writing and, with all of this, waiting for a voice that remained silent, hearing very little that meant anything to her at all. The dread implications of this condition made her blink her eyes and vow to be brave, to do better, not to give way. But it was not easy. ~ Anita Brookner

Once or twice, in the first days of his marriage, he had asked himself with a slight shiver what would happen if Susy should begin to bore him. The thing had happened to him with other women as to whom his first emotions had not differed in intensity from those she inspired. ~ Edith Wharton

The modern mind is never popular in its own day. People hate being made to think. ~ Edith Hamilton

But these backwaters of existence sometimes breed, in their sluggish depths, strange acuities of emotion ... ("Afterward") ~ Edith Wharton

All the Jews of Polish origin were being sent back to the land of their forefathers, and so the two gentle sisters kissed us and packed and left. We sent them packages in care of the Jewish community in Warsaw, but of course the packages were returned because it was illegal to send anything to Jews. So we took the advice of a wily neighbor, wrote the address in Polish, and like magic the packages arrived. ~ Edith Hahn Beer

Among all these stupid pretty women she had such a sense of power, of knowing almost everything better than they did. ~ Edith Wharton

She had taken everything else from him, and now she meant to take the one thing that made up for it all. ~ Edith Wharton

He bent and laid his lips on her hands, which were cold and lifeless. She drew them away, and he turned to the door, found his coat and hat under the faint gas-light of the hall, and plunged out into the winter night bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate. ~ Edith Wharton

It is surprising how little narrow walls and a low ceiling matter, when the roof of the soul has suddenly been raised. ~ Edith Wharton

But she had the awful gift of omnipresence, of exercising her influence from a distance; so that while the old family friends and visitors at Longlands said, "It's wonderful, now tactful Blanche is - how she keeps out of the young people's way," every member of the household, from its master to the last boots and scullion and gardener's boy, knew that Her Grace's eyes was on them all. ~ Edith Wharton

It is true that all men are created in the image of God, but Christians are supposed to be conscious of that fact, and being conscious of it should recognize the importance of living artistically, aesthetically, and creatively, as creative creatures of the Creator. If we have been created in the image of an Artist, then we should look for expressions of artistry, and be sensitive to beauty, responsive to what has been created for us (p. 32). ~ Edith Schaeffer

Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths? ~ Edith Wharton

People were leaping off La Bestia and running as if chased by demons spilling from hell. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Melquis and Edith jump together; I could tell Solyapa was still in front of me. I let go more out of reflex than plan, and regretted it that instant, thinking that perhaps I should have helped Solyapa first. No matter, I was surprised by the jerky scrape of dirt against my flesh as it tugged and wrestled against me as I kept moving forward despite being on the ground. The dirt itself was surprisingly hot; there was red in my eyes, nothing was clear; I felt a pain over the front of my head and my right eye was throbbing. ~ -Milan Sime Martinic, Ironway: Watching Over Benjamin Hill -

None so good that he has no faults, None so wicked that he is worth naught. ~ Edith Hamilton

Answer the most important questions at the start of any journey towards freedom:
What am I doing now?
Is it working?
Is it bringing me closer to my goals, or farther away? ~ Edith Eva Eger

Then the house had been boldly planned with a ball-room, so that, instead of squeezing through a narrow passage to get to it (as at the Chiverses') one marched solemnly down a vista of enfiladed drawing-rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d'or), seeing from afar the many-candled lustres reflected in the polished parquetry, and beyond that the depths of a conservatory where camellias and tree-ferns arched their costly foliage over seats of black and gold bamboo. ~ Edith Wharton

The fifth race is that which is now upon the earth: the iron race. They live in evil times and their nature too has much of evil, so that they never have rest from toil and sorrow. As the generations pass, they grow worse; sons are always inferior to their fathers. A time will come when they have grown so wicket that they will worship power, might will be right to them, and reverence for the good will cease to be. ~ Edith Hamilton

To answer the question, what makes a tragedy, is to answer the question wherein lies the essential significance of life, what the dignity of humanity depends upon in the last analysis. Here the tragedians speak to us with no uncertain voice. The great tragedies themselves offer the solution to the problem they propound. It is by our power to suffer, above all, that we are of more value than the sparrows. Endow them with a greater or as great a potentiality of pain and our foremost place in the world would no longer be undisputed. Deep down, when we search out the reason for our conviction of the transcendent worth of each human being, we know that it is because of the possibility that each can suffer so terribly. What do outside trappings matter, Zenith or Elsinore? Tragedy's preoccupation is with suffering. But, ~ Edith Hamilton

Don't be fearful about the journey ahead; don't worry about where you are going or how you are going to get there. If you believe in the first person of the Trinity, God the Father, also believe in the second person of the Trinity, the one who came as the Light of the World, not only to die for people, but to light the way ... This one, Jesus Christ, is himself the Light and will guide your footsteps along the way. ~ Edith Schaeffer

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that refledts it. ~ Edith Warton 18621937

There is a field where all wonderful perfections of microscope and telescope fail, all exquisite niceties of weights and measures, as well as that which is behind them, the keen and driving power of the mind. No facts however indubitably detected, no effort of reason however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach's music is beautiful. ~ Edith Hamilton

Yes: I was down there once, and for a good while afterward I could call up the sight of it in winter. But now it's all snowed under. ~ Edith Wharton

She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making. ~ Edith Wharton

Because you're such a wonderful spectacle: I always like to see what you are doing. ~ Edith Wharton

I don't create poetry, I create myself, for me my poems are a way to me. ~ Edith Sodergran

Nobody's perfect,' my mother said. 'You'll have to learn to get along with him.'

'You can't learn to get along with him,' I said, 'any more than you can learn to get along with a volcano. ~ Edith Konecky

I signed their paper. It was a contract obligating me to spend six weeks doing farmwork in the north of Germany. If I didn't show up at the train station tomorrow, the paper said, I would be treated as a wanted criminal and hunted down without mercy. ~ Edith Hahn Beer

That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way. ~ Edith Wharton

I want to make one thing perfectly clear. When I talk about victims and survivors, I am not blaming victims -- so many of whom never had a chance. ~ Edith Eger

I am sure that there is no place in the world where your message would not be enhanced by your making the place (whether tiny or large, a hut or a palace) orderly, artistic and beautiful with some form of creativity, some form of 'art' (p. 213). ~ Edith Schaeffer

What counted was how you behaved while death let you live, and how you met death when life released you. ~ Edith Pearlman

Even in houses commonly held to be 'booky' one finds, nine times out of ten, not a library but a book-dump. ~ Edith Wharton

Most women dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous reincarnation, or hope to be one in the next. ~ Edith Sitwell

The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it. ~ Edith Wharton

Convention, so often a mask for injustice ... ~ Edith Hamilton

What a rich phrase. You could live a life on the income it yielded. ~ Edith Pearlman

There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe. ~ Edith Wharton

For me, sleeping is a waste of time. I'm afraid to sleep. It's a form of death. ~ Edith Piaf

Archer was too intelligent to think that a young woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that reminded her of her past. She might believe herself wholly in revolt against it; but what had charmed her in it would still charm her even though it were against her will. ~ Edith Wharton

I've been thinking about Jesus. Don't you find it a bit strange that, since He was living with His family and all, He up and left them just when they needed him most? ~ Edith Piaf

I am very fond of Edith Wharton. She's quite high brow but also a great storyteller. My favorite is 'The House of Mirth.' I also like 'The Reef.' ~ Ken Follett

If anyone comes to me, I want to lead them to Him. ~ Edith Stein

All the exquisite influences of the hour trembled in their veins, and drew them to each other as the loosened leaves were drawn to the earth. ~ Edith Wharton

Well
there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor his, but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own moral contempt for it and physical dependence on it, of his half-talents and her half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield. ~ Edith Wharton

But you said the words you knew, which were not always the ones you meant. ~ Edith Pearlman

And the way they are now, I don't see's there's much difference between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard; 'cept that down there they're all quiet, and the women have got to hold their tongues. ~ Edith Wharton

The provocation in her eyes increased his amusement - he had not supposed she would waste her powder on such small game; but perhaps she was only keeping her hand in; or perhaps a girl of her type had no conversation but of the personal kind. At any rate, she was amazingly pretty, and he had asked her to tea and must live up to his obligations. ~ Edith Wharton

You never did ask each other anything, did you? And you never told each other anything. You just sat and watched each other, and guessed at what was going on underneath. A deaf-and-dumb asylum, in fact! ~ Edith Wharton

I am no woman. I am a neuter.
I am a child, a page-boy, and a bold decision,
I am a laughing glimpse of a burning sun
I am a net for all voracious fish,
I am a toast to every woman's honor,
I am a step toward chance and disaster,
I am a leap in freedom and the self
I am the blood's whisper in a man's ear,
I am the soul's shiver, the flesh's longing and denial,
I am an entry sign to new paradises
I am a flame, seeking and jolly,
I am a water, deep, but daring up to the knees,
I am fire and water, in sincere context, on free term ~ Edith Sodergran

The one thing that astonished him now was that he should have stood for five minutes arguing with her across the width of the room, when just touching her made everything so simple. ~ Edith Wharton

They stood together in the gloom of the spruces, an empty world glimmering about them wide and gray under the stars ~ Edith Wharton

When we think of cruelty, we must try to remember the stupidity, the envy, the frustration from which it has arisen. ~ Edith Sitwell

Not: Why did I live? But: What is mine to do with the life I've been given? ~ Edith Eger

But, my dear, it's just the fugitiveness of mortal caring that makes it so exquisite! It's because we know we can't hold fast to it, or to each other, or to anything... ~ Edith Wharton