Edith Wharton - Time Quotes

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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.

Edith Wharton
If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.

Edith Wharton
I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

Edith Wharton
Time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually, it loiters; but just when one has come to count on its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild, irrational gallop.

Edith Wharton
But her personality was a little tarnished: she was in want of social renovation. She had been doing and saying the same things for too long a time.

Edith Wharton
Do you know-I hardly remembered you?
Hardly remembered me?
I mean: how shall I explain? I-it's always so. Each time you happen to me all over again.

Edith Wharton
His mind had been receptive up to a certain age, and then had snapped shut on what it possessed, like a replete crustacean never reached by another high tide. People, I had by this time found, all stopped living at one time or another, however many years longer they continued to be alive.

Edith Wharton
Ah, perhaps it was true — perhaps she did not know how to bear happiness. It took her by the inmost fibers, burned through her like a fever, was going to give her no rest, no peace, no time to steady and tame it in her dancing soul.

Edith Wharton
With Mrs. Fairford conversation seemed to be a concert and not a solo. She kept drawing in the others, giving each a turn, beating time for them with her smile, and somehow harmonizing and linking together what they said.

Edith Wharton
Yes, you have been away a very long time.' 'Oh, centuries and centuries; so long,' she said, 'that I'm sure I'm dead and buried and this dear old place is heaven.

Edith Wharton
There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to 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.

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

Edith Wharton
In the dissolution of sentimental partnerships it is seldom that both associates are able to withdraw their funds at the same time.

Edith Wharton
There is someone I must say goodbye to. Oh, not you - we are sure to see each other again - but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back to you - I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with you.

Edith Wharton
Stop running around 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.

Edith Wharton