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The Old Maid: The 'Fifties QUOTES

The Old Maid: The 'Fifties QUOTES

1 " Perhaps, if I hadn’t been, once before—I mean, if I’d always been a prudent deliberate Ralston, it would have been kinder to Tina in the end.” Dr. Lanskell sank his gouty bulk into the chair behind his desk, and beamed at her through ironic spectacles. “I hate in-the-end kindnesses: they’re about as nourishing as the third day of cold mutton. "

― Edith Wharton , The Old Maid: The 'Fifties

2 " Nineteenth-century America was gone; twentieth-century America was alien. “All that I thought American in a true sense is gone, and I see nothing but vain-glory, crassness and a total ignorance . . . ,” she wrote. She began to reconsider the old, lost world. What had seemed once petty and insular now seemed valuable and dignified; the rules, she saw, had been founded on moral principle. “I am steeping myself in the nineteenth century,” she wrote, “. . . such a blessed refuge from the turmoil and mediocrity of today—like taking sanctuary in a mighty temple. "

― Edith Wharton , The Old Maid: The 'Fifties

3 " The drawing-room door opened, and two high-stocked and ample-coated young men came in—two Jim Ralstons, so to speak. Delia had never before noticed how much her husband and his cousin Joe were alike: it made her feel how justified she was in always thinking of the Ralstons collectively. "

― Edith Wharton , The Old Maid: The 'Fifties