McKenna > McKenna's Quotes

“You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“She is written in a foreign tongue.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.”
― Henry James

“She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines
Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines
In two straight lines they broke their bread
And brushed their teeth and went to bed.
They left the house at half past nine
In two straight lines in rain or shine-
The smallest one was Madeline.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans, Madeline

“Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.”
― Henry James, Theory of Fiction: Henry James

“The purpose of art is to console and amuse—myself, and, I hope, others.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans

“She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“I don't want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.”
― Henry James

“We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”
― Henry James, The Middle Years

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Women ought to be free - as free as we are,' he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Let us cultivate our garden.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells

“She had a great desire for knowledge, but she really preferred almost any source of information to the printed page; she had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering. She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movements of her own heart and the agitations of the world. For this reason she was fond of seeing great crowds and large stretches of country, of reading about revolutions and wars, of looking at historical pictures...”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.”
― Edith Wharton, The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton

“You thought I was a lovelorn mistress and I was really just an expensive prostitute.”
― Edith Wharton

“There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“The only way to not think about money is to have a great deal of it."

You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe.”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury. It was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in.”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.”
― Edith Wharton

“Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying for their board.”
― Edith Wharton, Xingu and other Stories

“Her failure was a useful preliminary to success.”
― Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country

“Every house is a mad-house at some time or another.”
― Edith Wharton

“One of the great things about travel is you find out how many good, kind people there are.”
― Edith Wharton

“A woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed until we drop.”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“[B]ut he had lived in a world in which, as he said, no one who loved ideas need hunger mentally.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“She threw back her head with a laugh that made her chins ripple like little waves.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence