Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.
Edith WhartonThe worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.
Edith WhartonBut I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.
Edith WhartonIt is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.
Edith WhartonThere are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it.
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 Wharton