Edith Wharton

"Real culture lives by sympathies and dislikes, not by rules."

"I have always thought that one's surroundings tell you much about a person."

"Silence is sometimes the safest answer."

"The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it."

"There are two ways of taking life—too seriously, or not seriously enough. Either way leads to misery."

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

"The real alchemy is in transforming the base metal of experience into the gold of wisdom."

"Beware of monotony; it is the mother of all the deadly sins."

"A woman's business is never done, but a man's may be."

"The stubbornest of all our perversities is the belief that we are less subject to the laws of nature than the vegetables."

"One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often."

"Every great novel is a fairy tale."

"The right to be unhappy is essential."

"Genius is a constellation; talent is a single star."

"Tradition is a form of beauty that creates continuity between the past, present, and future."

"The worst thing about a liar is that he believes himself."

"There is no such thing as a necessary evil."

"Life is the saddest thing there is, next to death."

"The secret to keeping young is to find an absorbing interest."

"A woman who has once been made a fool of by sentiment is wary of it ever after."

"The only way to get rid of an evasion is to turn and face it."

"Real originality consists not in the plot, but in the excellence of the execution."

"The sight of pain has always been a source of disturbance to me."

"We have been so preoccupied with denying that we are savage that we have had little time to learn to be civilized."

"The only real disloyalty is disloyalty to one's self."

"One cannot live only for oneself."

"The value of a thing is not in the object itself, but in the desire it awakens."

"Narrowness is a quality so apt to be mistaken for refinement."

"A man who has once loved deeply will never be the same."

"The arts are a business like any other if you treat them that way."