The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.
— Edith Wharton
He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.
The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.
What's the use of making mysteries? It only makes people want to nose 'em out.
My little dog - a heartbeat at my feet.
When people ask for time, it's always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesn't take half as long to say.
I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views.
Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny.
I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
To be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it?
If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.
Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.
True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.
After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.
The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.
Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.
I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.
In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.
Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.
The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.
Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.
A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue.
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
