Edith Wharton

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that receives it.

Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.

Life is always either a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.

If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.

Each time you happen to me all over again.

There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there’s only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time.

The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!

We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?

There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul.

I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.