Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.
Edith WhartonAh, good conversation - there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.
Edith WhartonThere was once a little girl who was so very intelligent that her parents feared that she would die. But an aged aunt, who had crossed the Atlantic in a sailing-vessel, said, 'My dears, let her marry the first man she falls in love with, and she will make such a fool of herself that it will probably save her life.
Edith WhartonThe very good people didn't convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands — and yet you hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference.
Edith Wharton