Edith Wharton Quotes

You know how it is when two souls meet in a burst of ecstatic volubility, with hearts tickling to hear and to tell, to know everything, to reveal everything, the shared reverence for the other's otherness, a feeling of solitude radiantly snapped by full *contact* - all that?

No mind, however loving, could bear to see plainly into all the recess of another mind.

Someone has said that conversation is sex for the soul.

We all fall into our habits, our routines, our ruts. They're used quite often, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid living, to avoid doing the messy part of having relationships with other people, of dealing with a person next to us. That's why we can all be in a room on our cell phones and not have to deal with one another.

Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe.

I feel like people make such a big deal out of sexuality. It's so weird to me, because at the end of the day, it's just about soul connection. It's just about who you connect with.

I don't believe in the concept of a soul mate. Because we are all unique, but we're also simply too similar.

It will do us little good to wire the world if we limit our vision. It will do us little good to wire the world if we short circuit our souls.

The last page of [Lincoln in the Bardo] - without giving too much away - involves somebody entering somebody else. Not in a sexual way. But it says one of the simplest things you could ever say, which is that we must try and be inside each other. We must have some kind of feeling for each other and enter into each other's experience.

It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the soul of another.

The foundation of friendship demands the greatest likeness of human souls and hearts.

The eye-is it not the mirror of the soul in all living creatures?

Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God.

I wasn't quite as certain that I knew her soul. When it came right down to it, I wasn't sure she knew me either.

It's an industry of lonely people in a crowd, Bill Margold was saying. 'They're scared to get close to each other. You're far better off having someone to sleep next to then having someone to sleep with because you have to trust someone you sleep next to.

A person who can connect with their partner, another human being who can connect with their soul − it's not just learning steps, it's about expressing something. I've found in dancing all my life that I can release something as a dancer that I can't in any other way.

even those who call themselves 'intimate' know very little about each other - hardly ever know just how a sorrow is felt, and hurt each other by their very attempts at sympathy or consolation. We can bear no hand on our bruises.

I am persuaded that we are all surrounded by an atmosphere - a separate, sensitive, distinct envelope extending some distance from our visible persons - and whenever my invisible atmosphere is invaded, it affects my whole nervous system. The proximity of any bodies but those I love best is unendurable to my body.

My theory is - we don’t really go that far into other people, even when we think we do. We hardly ever go in and bring them out. We just stand at the jaws of the cave, and strike a match, and ask quickly if anybody’s there.

And he made love to her, offering his body in both tenderness and anger, unsure which was the best way to pass her bits of his soul so that she could patch her own with it

Only parts of us will ever touch only parts of others.

Words can never fully say what we want them to say, for they fumble, stammer, and break the best porcelain. The best one can hope for is to find along the way someone to share the path, content to walk in silence, for the heart communes best when it does not try to speak.

Since we are mortal, friendships are best kept to a moderate level, rather than sharing the very depths of our souls.

On connecting: Where does one person end and another person begin?