Edith Wharton

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

“Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.”

“Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.”

“There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny.”

“Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.”

“True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.”