In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.
Edith Wharton... even in houses commonly held to be 'booky' one finds, nine times out of ten, not a library but a book-dump.
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