He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.
Edith WhartonIf you're as detached as that, why does the obsolete institution of marriage survive with you?"
Oh, it still has its uses. One couldn't be divorced without it.
The difference is that these young people take it for granted that they're going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always took it for granted that we shouldn't. Only, I wonder—the thing one's so certain of in advance: can it ever make one's heart beat as wildly?
Edith WhartonThe boy was not insensitive, he knew; but he had the facility and self-confidence that came of looking at fate not as a master but as an equal.
Edith WhartonIn any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.
Edith WhartonDialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving toward the watcher on the shore.
Edith WhartonShe wanted, passionately and persistently, two things which she believed should subsist together in any well-ordered life: amusement and respectability.
Edith WhartonNão é verdade, monsieur, que o grande valor está em manter a própria liberdade intelectual, em não escravizar o nosso poder de apreciação, a nossa independência crítica?
Edith WhartonAs soon as he heard of the Sillerton’s party he had said to himself that the Marchioness Manson would certainly come to Newport with the Blenkers, and that Madame Olenska might again take the opportunity of spending the day with her grandmother. At any rate, the Blenker habitation would probably be deserted, and he would be able, without indiscretion, to satisfy a vague curiosity concerning it. He was not sure that he wanted to see the Countess Olenska again; but ever since he had looked at her from the path above the bay he had wanted, irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the real one in the summer-house. The longing was with him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man for food or drink once tasted and long since forgotten. He could not see beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to, for he was not conscious of any wish to speak to Madame Olenska or to hear her voice. He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.
Edith WhartonTags: life
Everything about her was warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose.
Edith Wharton« first previous
Page 19 of 29.
next last »
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.