The value of books is proportionate to what may be called their plasticity -- their quality of being all things to all men, of being diversely moulded by the impact of fresh forms of thought.
Edith WhartonโYes, the Gorgon has dried your tears,โ he said. โWell, she opened my eyes too; it's a delusion to say that she blinds people. What she does is just the contrary โ she fastens their eyelids open, so that they're never again in the blessed darkness.โ
Edith WhartonOur blindest impulses become evidence of perspicacity when they fall in with the course of events.
Edith WhartonA frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys.
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