Edith Wharton Quotes

Under the big political umbrella, a man is just like a leaf in the ocean, with no control of his destiny and does not have any choice.

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

There's nothing worse in life than to sit there and be the victim of a process that's outside your control.

Helplessness is such a rotten feeling. There's nothing you can do about it. Being helpless is like being paralyzed. It's sickness. The cure calls for a monumental effort to stand up and start walking somewhere, anywhere. But that takes some doing.

Twere better to be born a stone Of ruder shape, and feeling none, Than with a tenderness like mine And sensibilities so fine! Ah, hapless wretch! condemn'd to dwell Forever in my native shell, Ordained to move when others please, Not for my own content or ease; But toss'd and buffeted about, Now in the water and now out.

That feeling of hopelessness only serves your masters.

But there was nothing I could do with the emotion really. It just went away after a while.

He wanted to think of words that would make some difference but there were none in any language he knew that were sufficient to the moment or that would change a single thing.

I could have screamed, but I didn’t. I could have fought, but I didn’t. I just lay there and let it happen, watching the winter-white sky go gray above me.

Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there's nothing to be done about them.

Apathy is the self-defense of the powerless.

...the plan will happen in spite of us, not because of us.

I have a sense of melancholy isolation, life rapidly vanishing, all the usual things. It's very strange how often strong feelings don't seem to carry any message of action

I'm always interested in a claustrophobic situation where people might be powerless to do things. My first three novels were all about families. Things that happen in a house within a family, because you're a child or because you want to keep the family together, you suffer things you might not have had to suffer if you weren't in that situation.

At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.

Danger lurks when people are dissociated and detached from their own story or feelings.

All those men who end up disappointing you. After a while, you don't even want to have feelings anymore. You just want to get on with your life.

there was something about that city, though it didn't let me feel guilty that I had no feeling for the things so many others needed. it let me alone.

Woe to the dupe that yields to Fate!

It is passivity that dulls feeling.

Ah yes, the gods use us mortals as footballs!

He wasn't surprised. He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you've done all the work to get something you don't even want it anymore.

Outcast on a cold star, unable to feel anything but an awful helpless numbness. I look down into the warm, earthy world. Into a nest of lovers' beds, baby cribs, meal tables, all the solid commerce of life in this earth, and feel apart, enclosed in a wall of glass.

I understand that there are a lot of things you cannot control in this world.

Her laugh was sad and taciturn, seemingly detached from any feeling of the moment, like something she kept in the cupboard and took out only when she had to, using it with no feeling of ownership, as if the infrequency of her smiles had made her forget the normal way to use them.