The New York Stories of Edith Wharton Quotes

“To decide beforehand exactly how one ought to behave in given circumstances is like deciding that one will follow a certain direction in crossing an unexplored country. Afterward we find that we must turn out for the obstacles —cross the rivers where they’re shallowest—take the tracks that others have beaten—make all sorts of unexpected concessions. Life is made up of compromises:”
― Edith Wharton, The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

“She, for one, would have no share in maintaining the pretense of which she had been a victim: the pretense that a man and a woman, forced into the narrowest of personal relations, must remain there till the end, though they may have outgrown the span of each other’s natures as the mature tree outgrows the iron brace about the sapling.”
― Edith Wharton, The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

“We’re all imprisoned, of course—all of us middling people, who don’t carry our freedom in our brains. But we’ve accommodated ourselves to our different cells, and if we’re moved suddenly into new ones we’re likely to find a stone wall where we thought there was thin air, and to knock ourselves senseless against it.”
― Edith Wharton, The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

“A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue,and in the semi-widowhood of this second separation Mrs. Varick took on an air of sanctity, and was allowed to confide her wrongs to some of the most scrupulous ears in town.”
― Edith Wharton, The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

“The souls of short thick-set men, with chubby features, mutton-chop whiskers, and pale eyes peering between folds of fat like almond kernels in half-split shells—souls thus encased do not reveal themselves to the casual scrutiny as delicate emotional instruments.”
― Edith Wharton, The New York Stories of Edith Wharton