There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
Edith WhartonMy first few weeks in America are always miserable, because the tastes I am cursed with are all of a kind that cannot be gratified here, and I am not enough in sympathy with our gross public to make up for the lack on the aesthetic side. One's friends are delightful; but we are none of us Americans, we don't think or feel as the Americans do, we are the wretched exotics produced in a European glass-house, the most displaced and useless class on earth!
Edith WhartonShe seemed to melt against him in her terror, and he caught her in his arms, held her fast there, felt her lashes beat his cheek like netted butterflies.
Edith WhartonTo have you here, you mean-in reach and yet out of reach? To meet you in this way, on the sly? It's the very reverse of what I want.
Edith Wharton