Edith Wharton Quotes

“Don't they always go from bad to worse? There's no turning back--yourold self rejects you, and shuts you out. ~Lilly Bart”

“Dad said I had no respect for money and that if I didn't learn when I was little when was I going to learn? Kids who get Bart Simpson dolls at the drop of a hat turn into punks who steal from convenience stores, ‘cos they wind up thinking they can have whatever they want, just like that. So instead of a Bart doll he bought me an ugly porcelain pig with a slot in its back, and now I'll grow up to be okay, now I won't turn into a punk.”

“The noble buoyancy of her attitude, its suggestion of soaring grace, revealed the touch of poetry in her beauty that Selden always felt in her presence, yet lost the sense of when he was not with her. Its expression was now so vivid that for the first time he seemed to see before him the real Lily Bart, divested of all the trivialities of her little world, and catching for a moment a note of that eternal harmony of whichher beauty was a part.”

“Anyone can support a team that is winning - it takes no courage. But to stand behind a team to defend a team when it is down and really needs you, that takes a lot of courage.”

“Athletic competition clearly defines the unique power of our attitude.”

“My marriage to my husband, Bart Conner in 1996 is my proudest personal moment.”

“He had a real mother, and a stepfather named Bart who Martin called Fart but only with his brothers and James”

“One of the most glorious, yet tragic, things about being human was that, sometimes, you just had to learn things for yourself. Call it a flaw, call it a blessing, call it life. If everyone learned from everyone else’s mistakes, the world would be perfect.”

“Alarm clocks, I felt, were nothing more than a plague rained down by an evil force, possibly even Lucifer himself.”

“It’s not that I wanted to die . I just wanted to go to sleep for long enough for my life to find some meaning again.”