Frasi di Edith Wharton

“L'illusione di poter coltivare un'amicizia era svanita e la scena avvenuta al molo, in tutta la sua meschina volgarità, aveva gettato una luce di verità sul suo attimo di follia. Le pareva che le parole del suo tutore avessero messo a nudo di fronte alla folla ghignante i segreti tormenti della sua coscienza.”

“Mentre ogni altro pensiero si faceva sempre più confuso e irreale fino a ridursi a quell'incerto baluginio che assume il mondo per chi ci vede poco, la presenza del signor Royall prese a stagliarsi su quello sfondo indistinto con la salda robustezza di una roccia. Aveva sempre pensato a lui, come a un essere odioso che le intralciava il cammino, ma che poteva sconfiggere e domare, a suo piacimento. Solo una volta, il giorno della cerimonia, mentre i frammenti sparsi del suo discorso fluttuavano nella sua mente sconvolta, aveva intuito la presenza di un altro essere, un essere assai diverso dal nemico ottuso con cui divideva la sua vita, che, oltre la nebbia infuocata dei suoi sogni, si stagliava innanzi a lei con sorprendente precisione. Allora per un attimo le sue parole e il tono con cui le aveva pronunciate le avevano fatto intuire perché l'avesse sempre giudicato un uomo solitario. Ma ben presto la nebbia del sogno l'aveva nascosto di nuovo, facendole dimenticare quella fuggevole impressione.”

“Ci sono due modi di diffondere luce: essere la candela oppure essere lo specchio che la riflette.”

“La felicità è un'opera d'arte. Trattatela con cura.”

“Il mattino seguente il sole sorse su un mondo nuovo. Oddo doveva partire allo spuntar del giorno e l'alba lo sorprese alla finestra, mentre col pensiero la vedeva dispiegarsi e tuttavia non ancora del tutto visibile nell'estremo barlume delle stelle.”

“Il caldo si era fatto soffocante… Charity lo sentiva calare su di sé in ondate avvampanti, finché il mare dei volti in sala cominciò a danzare davanti ai suoi occhi come le immagini proiettate sullo schermo, in quel cinema di Nettleton. Per un attimo il viso del signor Royall spiccò nella confusione generale. L'uomo aveva ripreso il suo posto davanti all'armonium e la fissava con una tale intensità da darle l'impressione che quello sguardo fosse riuscito a penetrare fino al centro delle sue sensazioni confuse…”

“Be', stammi bene a sentire. Quel che mi preme è sei vuoi sposarmi. Il resto non mi interessa. Arrivato alla mia età, un uomo sa distinguere quello che conta da quello che non conta; è l'unico vantaggio di invecchiare.”

“She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.”

“Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well-you did love me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me.”

“An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.”

“Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.”

“Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
I loved light ever, light in eye and brain —
No tapers mirrored in long palace floors,
Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles,
But just the common dusty wind-blown day
That roofs earth's millions.”

“Life is always 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.”

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

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

“Ah, good conversation - there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.”

“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.”

“My little dog—a heartbeat at my feet.”

“In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.”

“In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.”

“I swear I only want to hear about you, to know what you've been doing. It's a hundred years since we've met-it may be another hundred before we meet again.”

“What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.”

“Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair.”

“Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.”

“She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.”

“Nothing is more perplexing to a man than the mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions.”

“The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances on any subject cross like interarching searchlights.”

“It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.”

“His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen.”

“She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin, dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his clothes—she was conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven with her deepest life.”

“Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.”