14 quotes
I know of nothing useful in life except what is beautiful or creates beauty.
Esther: A Novel (1884)
Every one who marries goes it blind, more or less.
Esther: A Novel (1884)
An artist must be man, woman and demi-god.
Esther: A Novel (1884)
This view of the case amused Esther for a time, but not for long — the matter was too serious for any treatment but a joke, and joking made it more serious still.
Esther: A Novel (1884)
One is a saint or one is not; every man can choose the career that suits him; but to be saint and sinner at the same time requires singular ingenuity.
Esther: A Novel (1884)
Some people are made with faith. I am made without it.
Esther: A Novel (1884)
In this atmosphere of charity, where all faiths were alike and all professions joined hands, the church and the world became one.
Esther: A Novel (1884)
I am never afraid of pure atheism; it is the flabby kind of sentimental deism that annoys me, because it is as slippery as air.
Esther: A Novel (1884)
She fell in love with the cataract and turned to it as a confidant, not because of its beauty or power, but because it seemed to tell her a story which she longed to understand.
Esther: A Novel (1884)
As for broken hearts, no self-respecting young woman shows such an ornament at any well regulated breakfast-table; they are kept in dark drawers and closets like other broken furniture.
Esther: A Novel (1884)
Mystery for mystery science beats religion hollow. I can't open my mouth in my lecture-room without repeating ten times as many unintelligible formulas as ever Hazard is forced to do in his church.
Esther: A Novel (1884)
Wharton was captivated by her sweet face, and tried to make her understand his theory that the merit of a painting was not so much in what it explained as in what it suggested.
Esther: A Novel (1884)
Esther looked at him with an expression that would have been a smile if it had not been infinitely dreary and absent; then she said, simply and finally:
"But George, I don't love you, I love him."
Esther: A Novel (1884)
Like most vigorous-minded men, seeing that there was no stopping-place between dogma and negation, he preferred to accept dogma. Of all weaknesses he most disliked timid and half-hearted faith. He would rather have jumped at once to Strong's pure denial, than yield an inch to the argument that a mystery was to be paltered with because it could not be explained.
Esther: A Novel (1884)