-winning American novelist, short story
writer, and design
er.
Wharton was born to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander in New York City
. She had two brothers, Frederic Rhinelander and Henry Edward. The saying "Keeping up with the Joneses
" is said to refer to her father's family. She shared a lifelong friendship with her Rhinelander niece, landscape architect Beatrix Farrand
of Reef Point
in Bar Harbor, Maine
, and often traveled with Henry James
in Europe.
There are two ways of spreading light: to beThe candle or the mirror that reflects it.
After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them & invent others that (one is fairly sure) don't exist — or exist in a less measure.
I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.
How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be "American" before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.