... even in houses commonly held to be 'booky' one finds, nine times out of ten, not a library but a book-dump.
Edith WhartonThere was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free.
Edith WhartonOld age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
Edith WhartonShe felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness about her.
Edith Wharton