Edith Wharton - The House of Mirth (1905)

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As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch.

Edith Wharton
Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.

Edith Wharton
She had never been able to understand the laws of a universe which was so ready to leave her out of its calculations.

Edith Wharton
If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was sure of her ability to meet them: it was characteristic of her to feel that the only problems she could not solve were those with which she was familiar.

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

Edith Wharton
She was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company.

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
Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self-depreciation.

Edith Wharton
She wanted to get away from herself, and conversation was the only means of escape that she knew.

Edith Wharton
Miss Corby's rôle was jocularity: she always entered the conversation with a handspring.

Edith Wharton
Miss Bart had the gift of following an undercurrent of thought while she appeared to be sailing on the surface of conversation.

Edith Wharton
'Ah,' said Mrs. Peniston, shutting her lips with the snap of a purse closing against a beggar.

Edith Wharton
It was harder to drown at sunrise than in darkness.

Edith Wharton
It is almost as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them proclaim that you think you are beautiful.

Edith Wharton
Before Selden left college he had learned that there are as many different ways of going without money as of spending it.

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

Edith Wharton
The civilized instinct finds a subtler pleasure in making use of its antagonist than in confounding him.

Edith Wharton
Neither one of the couple cared for money, but their disdain of it took the form of always spending a little more than was prudent.

Edith Wharton
No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity.

Edith Wharton
He was like a traveller so grateful for rescue from a dangerous accident that at first he is hardly conscious of his bruises.

Edith Wharton
He had come on her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. That is how she looks when she is alone! had been his first thought; and the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced.

Edith Wharton
I believe she keeps on being queenly in her own room, with the door shut.

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
Like many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer disliked to be kept waiting.

Edith Wharton
Everything about her was at once vigorous and exquisite, at once strong and fine. He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have been sacrificed to produce her.

Edith Wharton