For what endless years this life will have to go on! He felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth and the bounding blood in his veins.
Edith WhartonSince the Americans have ceased to have dyspepsia, they have lost the only thing that gave them any expression.
Edith WhartonTheir long years together had shown him that it did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of ugly appetites.
Edith WhartonOnly the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest know us enables us to live with them.
Edith WhartonApart 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