Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence (1920)

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To me the only death is monotony. I always say to Ellen: Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.

Edith Wharton
What's the use of making mysteries? It only makes people want to nose 'em out.

Edith Wharton
The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.

Edith Wharton
The persons of their world lived in an atmosphere of faint implications and pale delicacies, and the fact that he and she understood each other without a word seemed to the young man to bring them nearer than any explanation would have done.

Edith Wharton
It seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, even if breakable in prosperity, should be indissoluble in misfortune.

Edith Wharton
It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behavior of those who gave rise to them.

Edith Wharton
He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.

Edith Wharton
Archer hung a moment on a thin thread of memory, but it snapped and floated off with the disappearing face.

Edith Wharton
His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen.

Edith Wharton
It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.

Edith Wharton
Cleanliness and comfort are two of the costliest items in a modest budget.

Edith Wharton
To be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it?

Edith Wharton
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.

Edith Wharton
In the rotation of crops there was a recognized season for wild oats; but they were not sown more than once.

Edith Wharton
Ah, good conversation—there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

Edith Wharton
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.

Edith Wharton