Edith Quotes & Sayings

We're sorry for frightening you, Tris,' another voice says, 'but anonymity is integral to our operation. We mean you no harm.'
'Let go of me then!' I say, almost growling. All the hands holding me on the wall fall away.
'Who are you?' I demand.
'We are the Alliegiant,' the voice replies. 'And we are many, yet we are no one ... '
I can't help it: I laugh. — Veronica Roth

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

Death is the beginning of something. — Edith Piaf

The comedy of each age holds up a mirror to the people of that age, a mirror that is unique. — Edith Hamilton

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

Beauty (was)a gift which, in the eyes of New York, justified every success, and excused a certain number of failings. — Edith Wharton

She had once more shown her talent for profiting by the unexpected, and dangerous theories as to the advisability of yielding to impulse were germinating under the surface of smiling attention which she continued to present to her companion. — Edith Wharton

The Old Testament is the record of men's conviction that God speaks directly to men. — 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

Baron Louis de Rothschild, one of the wealthiest Jewish men in Vienna, tried to leave the city. The Nazis stopped him at the airport and put him in prison, and whatever they did to him there convinced him that he ought to sign over everything to the Nazi regime. Then they let him leave. The SS took over the Rothschild Palace on Prinz Eugenstrasse and renamed it the Center for Jewish Emigration. — Edith Hahn Beer

Naturalness is not always consonant with taste. — Edith Wharton

Ah, he would take her beyond
beyond the ugliness, the pettiness, the attrition and corrosion of her soul. — Edith Wharton

I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, and consequently suggests more tugging, and pain, and diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie. — Edith Wharton

I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views. — Edith Wharton

What I want to give in the theatre is beauty, that's what I want to give. — Edith Evans

The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation they do not want to attract attention. — Edith Sitwell

That the stars are adamant
everyone understands
but I won't give up seeking joy on each blue wave
or peace below every gray stone. — Edith Sodergran

is probable that, like the illustrious author of the drama, all were unconscious of any incongruity between their sentiments and actions. — Edith Wharton

The patch of lawn before it had relapsed into a hayfield; but to the left an overgrown box-garden full of dahlias and rusty rose-bushes encircled a ghostly summer-house of trellis-work that had once been white, surmounted by a wooden Cupid who had lost his bow and arrow but continued to take ineffectual aim. — Edith Wharton

Our personal afflictions involve the living God; the only way in which Satan can persecute or afflict God is through attacking the people of God. The only way we can have personal victory in the midst of these flying arrows raining down on us is to call upon the Lord for help. It is His strength, supplied to us in our weakness, that makes victory after victory possible. — Edith Schaeffer

Not his match! And have you not the heart in you to be anything but best? How many are his match? How many in this world do you think stand in the front rank? Are all the rest of us to give up and sit on our hands rather than serve humbly where we deserve? — Edith Pargeter

These Americans, under their forthcoming manner, their surface-gush, as some might call it, have an odd reticence about what goes on underneath. — 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

All day long you sit and sew,
Stitch life down for fear it grow,
Stitch life down for fear we guess
At the hidden ugliness.
Dusty voice that throbs with heat,
Hoping with your steel-thin beat
To put stitches in my mind,
Make it tidy, make it kind,
You shall not: I'll keep it free
Though you turn earth, sky and sea
To a patchwork quilt to keep
Your mind snug and warm in sleep! — Edith Sitwell

Charity, till then, had been conscious only of a vague self-disgust and a frightening physical distress; now, of a sudden, there came to her the grave surprise of motherhood. — Edith Wharton

Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind of people who only ask one to pretend! — Edith Wharton

Mr. and Mrs. Wetherall's circle was so large that God was included in their visiting-list. — Edith Wharton

She always paid for her rare indiscretions by a violent reaction of prudence. — Edith Wharton

It was the difference between walking with a stranger and walking with your heartmate. It was the difference between working for duty and working for love. — Edith Pattou

Toward Florence he was specially drawn by the fact that Alfieri now lived there; but, as often happens after such separations, the reunion was a disappointment. Alfieri, indeed, warmly welcomed his friend; but he was engrossed in his dawning passion for the Countess of Albany, and — Edith Wharton

Fight hard, fight fair and persevere — Edith Nourse Rogers

Her vivid smile was like a light held up to dazzle me. — Edith Wharton

There has been a marvelous joyous carnival of mourning for Edith Piaf and Jean Coctaeau, and it was real! They died as they had lived, with style and grace and their proper eccentricity; and Paris loves anybody who can live anarchically and be delightful entertainment at the same time. So do I. — Katherine Anne Porter

Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement. — Edith Wharton

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

Only the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest know us enables us to live with them. Love is the most impregnable refuge of self-esteem, and we hate the eye that reaches to our nakedness. Edith Wharton ~ The Touchstone — Edith Wharton

I checked out the two Edith Wharton books I had just returned because I'd read them so long ago and they are more apropos now than ever. They were The House of Mirth and The Children, which is about how life in the United States in New York changed in twenty-seven years fifty years ago.
("Wants") — Grace Paley

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

The farmers had grown proud and haughty. They ate better than anyone else in Germany now. And, like Volkswagen and Siemens, they had slaves. All they had to do was feed the local Nazi power elite, and they could have all the slaves they wanted. — Edith Hahn Beer

Very few great artists feel the giant agony of the world. — Edith Hamilton

Yes, one gets over things. But there are certain memories one can't bit on. — Edith Wharton

Patriotism alone is not enough. — Edith Cavell

The light of the October afternoon lay on an old high-roofed house which enclosed in its long expanse of brick and yellowish stone the breadth of a grassy court filled with the shadow and sound of limes. — Edith Wharton

Even the most beautiful legs - Marlene Dietrich's, for instance - look better when the kneecap is covered. — Edith Head

The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is the truth? Where a woman is concerned, it's the story that's easiest to believe. In this case it's a great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset's story than mine, because she has a big house and an opera box, and it's convenient to be on good terms with her — Edith Wharton

There is no dignity like the dignity of a soul in agony. — Edith Hamilton

If the ability to read carries the average man no higher than the gossip of his neighbours, if he asks nothing more nourishing out of books and the theatre than he gets hanging about the store, the bar and the street-corner, then culture is bound to be dragged down to him instead of his being lifted up by culture. — Edith Wharton

Women ought to be free - as free as we are,' he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences. — Edith Wharton

Your dresses should be tight enough to show you're a woman and loose enough to show you're a lady. — Edith Head

I could not make the war seem real for myself. Even though I had heard about the Nazi bombing of cities in Spain, I couldn't imagine an air attack on unarmed civilians. Remember, there were still horses on the roads of rural Germany at that time. Very few people understood what modern war would be like. — Edith Hahn Beer

In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of amiable qualities. She liked their elegance; their lightness, their lack of emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like obtuseness now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency. They were lords of the only world she cared for, and they were ready to admit her to their ranks and let her lord it with them. Already she felt within her a stealing allegiance to their standards, an acceptance of their limitations, a disbelief in the things they did not believe in, a contemptuous pity for the people who were not able to live as they lived. — Edith Wharton

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

We told each other every funny story we could think of. One of them stays in my mind. A German citizen wants to commit suicide. He tries to hang himself, but the rope is of such a poor quality that it breaks. He tries to drown himself, but the percentage of wood in the fabric of his pants is so high that he floats on the surface like a raft. Finally he starves to death from eating official government rations. — Edith Hahn Beer

We English majors ... need to promote public libraries as a tool in the war against terror. How many readers of Edith Wharton have engaged in terroristic acts? I challenge you to name one ... Do we need to wait until our cities lie in smoking ruins before we wake up to the fact that a first-class public library is a vital link in national defense? — Garrison Keillor

When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos. — Edith Hamilton

I live by Edith Wharton's rule to get rid of anything neither useful nor beautiful. So I put the TV out on the street. — Melissa Bank

Those who join the Carmelite Order are not lost to their near and dear ones, but have been won for them, because it is our vocation to intercede to God for everyone. — Edith Stein

There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul. — Edith Wharton

I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather exhausting; but when I see the stupid Italians I have met here, completely insensitive to their surroundings, and ignorant of the treasures of art and history among which they have grown up, I begin to think it is better to be an American, and bring to it all a mind and eye unblunted by custom. — Edith Wharton

As women, we all have certain weaknesses. I know one who can't resist pretty shoes but has nothing suitable to wear with them. Others adore frilly lingerie but never have any money to buy outer clothing. — Edith Head

Even now, I have to smile when I think of this. I tell you, of all the things about Werner Vetter that appealed to me, this most of all warmed my heart: He had no respect for the truth in Nazi Germany. — Edith Hahn Beer

He disliked wearing his uniform and always changed out of it right away when he came home. Symbols of authority irritated him - unless the authority was his own. — Edith Hahn Beer

I had 3 brothers, 2 died early, and one of them was living a good long time. — Edith Wilson

As she stood there, in her long sealskin coat, her hands thrust in a small round muff, her veil drawn down like a transparent mask to the tip of her nose, and the bunch of violets he had brought her stirring with her quickly-taken breath, it seemed incredible that this pure harmony of line and colour should ever suffer the stupid law of change. — Edith Wharton

I just was mesmerized by all of this life everywhere I looked. And so I wanted to be a marine biologist. — Edith Widder

Yes, the Gorgon has dried your tears.'
Well, she has opened my eyes too; it's a delusion to say she blinds people. What she does is the contrary-she fastens their eyelids open, so they're never again in the blessed darkness. — Edith Wharton

Just imagine dressing the two handsomest men in the world, and then getting this! — Edith Head

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

Meanwhile the old Marquess, visibly moved, was charging Odo to respect his elders and superiors, while in the same breath warning him not to take up with the Frenchified notions of the court, but to remember that for a lad of his condition the chief virtues were a tight seat in the saddle, a quick hand on the sword and a slow tongue in counsel. "Mind your own business," he concluded, "and see that others mind theirs." The Marchioness thereupon, with many tears, hung a — Edith Wharton

His light tone, in which, had her nerves been steadier, she would have recognized the mere effort to bridge over an awkward moment, jarred on her passionate desire to be understood. In her strange state of extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being already at the heart of the situation, it seemed incredible that any one should think it necessary to linger in the conventional outskirts of word-play and evasion. — Edith Wharton

Do you know, I began to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them - children, duties, visits, bores, relations - the things that protect married people from each other. We've been too close together - that has been our sin. We've seen the nakedness of each other's souls. — Edith Wharton

At first I thought he was walking a dog. Then I realized it was his date. — Edith Massey

Let's get you one, Anna."
"A lover?"
Edith rolled her eyes. "No. A fucking houseplant. Yes, a lover." Edith smirked. "It'll cheer you up! — Jill Alexander Essbaum

I gave thee what could not be heard
What had not been given before
The beat of my heart I gave ! — Edith M. Thomas

running to and fro with trays of refreshments. Odo, who knew that his mother lived in the Duke's palace, had vaguely imagined that his father's death must have plunged its huge precincts into silence and mourning; but as he followed the abate up successive flights of stairs and down long corridors full of shadow he heard a sound of dance music below and caught the flash of girandoles through the antechamber doors. The thought that his father's death had made no difference to any one in the palace was to the child so much more astonishing than any of the other impressions crowding his brain, that these were scarcely felt, and he passed as in a dream through rooms where servants were quarrelling over cards and waiting-women rummaged in wardrobes full of perfumed finery, to a bedchamber in which a lady dressed in weeds sat disconsolately at supper. "Mamma! Mamma!" he cried, springing — Edith Wharton

Denied access to information about important arenas of human life, history, and art, women like Augusta Welland demonstrate well into adulthood a lack of moral insight and sympathetic compassion. — Edith Wharton

..,No love cannot leave where there is no trust..,~cupid and psyche..,"Greek mythology of Edith Hamilton — Edith Hamilton

There is too much sour grapes for my taste in the present American attitude. The time to denounce the bankers was when we were all feeding off their gold plate; not now! At present they have not only my sympathy but my preference. They are the last representatives of our native industries. — Edith Wharton

I think imagination is one of the greatest blessings of life, and while one can lose oneself in a book one can never be thoroughly unhappy. — Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt

Edith's clothes were flung in disarray on the floor beside the bed, the covers of which had been thrown back carelessly; she lay naked and glistening under the light on the white unwrinkled sheet. Her body was lax and wanton in its naked sprawl, and it shone like pale gold. William came nearer the bed. She was fast asleep, but in a trick of the light her slightly opened mouth seemed to shape the soundless words of passion and love. He stood looking at her for a long time. He felt a distant pity and reluctant friendship and familiar respect; and he felt also a weary sadness, for he knew that he would never again be moved as he had once been moved by her presence. The sadness lessened, and he covered her gently, turned out the light, and got in bed beside her. — John Edward Williams

The Greeks not only face facts. They have no desire to escape from them. — Edith Hamilton

But my subconscious mind
the part I've heard writers call the lizard brain
could and did: it told me to reach for Anne Lamott or Edith Wharton or Calvin Trillin instead. And if I've learned one thing in my decades on earth, it's this: Don't argue with your lizard brain; it knows you better than you know yourself. — Sara Nelson

Poetry ennobles the heart and the eyes, and unveils the meaning of all things upon which the heart and the eyes dwell. It discovers the secret rays of the universe, and restores to us forgotten paradises. — Edith Sitwell

Nothing about his betrothed please him more than her resolute determination to carry to its utmost limit that ritual of ignoring the "unpleasant" in which they had both been brought up. — Edith Wharton

So close to the powers of evil she must have lived that she still breathed more freely in their air. — Edith Wharton

Well, do as you think best. That's every man's right and duty. But for me, I pledge you now I will not surrender one grain of my rights. What I took, I took and by God, I'll keep it, too. Take her home tomorrow, Archie, and never look back to watch what I do, for you know it before. I would not give him one knigh who had confided himself to me and none other, much less you. Only over my dead body," said Hotspur hardily, eye to eye with the friend he had made under Homildon Hill, "will King Henry ever claim you as his prisoner. — Edith Pargeter

What the mind forgets
The scars keep remembering — Edith L. Tiempo

The world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life. — Edith Massey

We can do nothing ourselves; God must do it. To speak to Him thus is easier by nature for woman than for man because a natural desire lives in her to give herself completely to someone. — Edith Stein

The savagery and power of Edith Wharton's ghost stories surprised me. — Michael Dirda

But she could not breathe long on the heights; there had been nothing in her training to develop any continuity of moral strength: what she craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was a situation in which the noblest attitude should also be the easiest. Hitherto her intermittent impulses of resistance had sufficed to maintain her self-respect. — Edith Wharton

I'm afraid I'm being an awful nuisance. — Edith Sitwell

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

Isn't it curious how one has only to open a book of verse to realise immediately that it was written by a very fine poet, or else that it was written by someone who is not a poet at all. In the case of the former, the lines, the images, though they are inherent in each other, leap up and give one this shock of delight. In the case of the latter, they lie flat on the page, never having lived. — Edith Sitwell

I don't want them to think that we dress like savages,' she replied, with a scorn that Pocahontas might have resented; and he was struck again by the religious reverence of even the most unworldly American women for the social advantages of dress.

'It's their armour,' he thought, 'their defence against the unknown, and their defiance of it.' And he understood for the first time the earnestness with which May, who was incapable of tying a ribbon in her hair to charm him, had gone through the solemn rite of selecting and ordering her extensive wardrobe. — Edith Wharton

But his
marital education had since made strides, and he now knew that a
disregard for money may imply not the willingness to get on without
it but merely a blind confidence that it will somehow be provided. If
Undine, like the lilies of the field, took no care, it was not because
her wants were as few but because she assumed that care would be taken
for her by those whose privilege it was to enable her to unite floral
insouciance with Sheban elegance. — Edith Wharton

It was the individuals who made their own rules in this situation. No one forced them to behave in an unkind manner. The opportunity to act decently toward us was always available to them. Only the tiniest number of them ever used it. — Edith Hahn Beer

Perhaps your greater learning may despise What others like - and there your wisdom lies. — Edith Birkhead

Moderately wise each one should be, Not overwise, for a wise man's heart Is seldom glad (Norse Wisdom) — Edith Hamilton

If it hadn't been for Grandma, we'd have had no ethnic tone at all. — Edith Konecky