Sanctuary Quotes

“But hitherto she had been like some young captive brought up in a windowless palace whose painted walls she takes for the actual world. Now the palace had been shaken to its base, and and through a cleft in the walls she looked out upon life.”
― Edith Wharton, Sanctuary

“His daughter, as part of himself, came within the normal range of his solicitude; but she was an outlying region, a subject province; and Mr. Orme's was a highly centralized polity.”
― Edith Wharton, Sanctuary

“Mrs. Peyton made no answer. She knew how much hung on the possibility of his whining the competition which for weeks past had engrossed him.”
― Edith Wharton, Sanctuary

“The tragedy of the woman's death, and of his own share in it, were as nothing in the disaster of his bright irreclaimableness.”
― Edith Wharton, Sanctuary

“The whole question hinged on Arthur's statement to his brother. Suppress that statement, and the claim vanished, and with it the scandal, the humiliation, the life-long burden of the woman and child dragging the name of Peyton through heaven knew what depths.”
― Edith Wharton, Sanctuary

“She could only gather, from the silences and evasions amid which she moved, that a woman had turned up—a woman who was of course "dreadful," and whose dreadfulness appeared to include a sort of shadowy claim upon Arthur. But the claim, whatever it was, had been promptly discredited.”
― Edith Wharton, Sanctuary

“It was a part of her discernment to be aware that life is the only real counsellor, that wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissues.”
― Edith Wharton, Sanctuary