For hours she had lain in a kind of gentle torpor, not unlike that sweet lassitude which masters one in the hush of a midsummer noon, when the heat seems to have silenced the very birds and insects, and, lying sunk in the tasselled meadow grasses, one looks up through a level roofing of maple-leaves at the vast, shadowless, and unsuggestive blue.
Edith WhartonThe 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 WhartonI want to put my hand out and touch you. I want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you're sick and when you're lonesome.
Edith WhartonThe real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your friends have lost.
Edith Wharton