Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying for their board.
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 WhartonI begin to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them - children, duties, visits, bores, relations - the things that protect married people from each other.
Edith WhartonArcher was too intelligent to think that a young woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that reminded her of her past. She might believe herself wholly in revolt against it; but what had charmed her in it would still charm her even though it were against her will.
Edith WhartonAs the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch.
Edith WhartonI believe I know the only cure, which is to make oneโs center of life inside of oneโs self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenityโto decorate oneโs inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone.
Edith Wharton