I am secretly afraid of animals.... I think it is because of the usness in their eyes, with the underlying not-usness which beliesit, and is so tragic a reminder of the lost age when we human beings branched off and left them: left them to eternal inarticulateness and slavery. Why? their eyes seem to ask us.
Edith WhartonThe taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.
Edith WhartonLife is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.
Edith WhartonWe live in our own souls as in an unmapped region, a few acres of which we have cleared for our habitation; while of the nature of those nearest us we know but the boundaries that march with ours.
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 Wharton