Edith Wharton

“ But I am not that girl now – indeed I'm not. I'm not impulsive – I think things out. I've thought this out. I know Alan loves me – I know how he loves me – and I believe I can help him – oh, not in the ways I had fancied before – but just merely by loving him." She paused, but Mrs. Quentin made no sign. "I see it all so differently now. I see what an influence love itself may be – how my believing in him, loving him, accepting him just as he is, might help him more than any theories, any arguments. ”

“ That made it so much worse for me – that I should have been the cause of your suffering for Alan!"
Mrs. Quentin drew a deep breath. "Not for Alan only," she said. Miss Fenno turned on her a wondering glance. "Not for Alan only. That pain every woman expects – and knows how to bear. We all know our children must have such disappointments, and to suffer with them is not the deepest pain. It's the suffering apart – in ways they don't understand." She breathed deeply. "I want you to know what I mean. You were right – that day – and I was wrong."
"Oh," the girl faltered. ”

“ Quentin knew that the momentary value of any argument lies in the capacity of the mind to which it is addressed, and as her shafts of persuasion spent themselves against Miss Fenno's obduracy, she said to herself that, since conduct is governed by emotions rather than ideas, the really strong people are those who mistake their sensations for opinions. ”

“ Mrs. Quentin looked at her thoughtfully. "Would it be permissible, I wonder, for an older woman to suggest that, at your age, it isn't always a misfortune to have what one calls one's judgment temporarily obscured?"
Miss Fenno flushed. "I try not to judge others –"
"You judge Alan." ”

“ Now and then you may drug it – but a touch wakes it again, as your face has waked it in me. There's always enough of one's old self left to suffer with...."
She stood up and faced the girl abruptly. "What shall I tell Alan?" she said.
Miss Fenno sat motionless, her eyes on the ground. Twilight was falling on the gallery – a twilight which seemed to emanate not so much from the glass dome overhead as from the crepuscular depths into which the faces of the pictures were receding. The custodian's step sounded warningly down the corridor. When the girl looked up she was alone. ”

“ Quentin's to seek in the enjoyment of the beautiful the distraction that most of her acquaintances appeared to find in each other's company. She had few friends, and their society was welcome to her only in her more superficial moods; but she could drug anxiety with a picture as some women can soothe it with a bonnet.
During the six months that had elapsed since her visit to Miss Fenno she had been conscious of a pain of which she had supposed herself no longer capable: as a man will continue to feel the ache of an amputated arm. ”

“ You can make a religious woman believe almost anything: there's the habit of credulity to work on. But when a girl's faith in the Deluge has been shaken, it's very hard to inspire her with confidence. She makes you feel that, before believing in you, it's her duty as a conscientious agnostic to find out whether you're not obsolete, or whether the text isn't corrupt, or somebody hasn't proved conclusively that you never existed, anyhow."
Mrs. Quentin was again silent. ”

“ He loves you still – I've been honest with you – but his love wouldn't change him. It is you who would have to change – to die gradually, as I have died, till there is only one live point left in me. Ah, if one died completely – that's simple enough! ”

“ Quentin finished for him.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Mrs. Fenno has the scope of a wax doll. Her rule of conduct is taken from her grandmother's sampler."
"But the daughter is so modern – and yet –"
"The result is the same? Not exactly. She admires you – oh, immensely!" He replaced the bronze and turned to his mother with a smile. "Aren't you on some hospital committee together? What especially strikes her is your way of doing good. She says philanthropy is not a line of conduct, but a state of mind – and it appears that you are one of the elect." ”

“ I have let you, as you say, speak your mind to me in terms that some women might have resented, because I wanted to show you how little, as the years go on, theories, ideas, abstract conceptions of life, weigh against the actual, against the particular way in which life presents itself to us – to women especially. ”

“ I was to turn the Radiator into an independent organ, and run it at a loss to show the public what a model newspaper ought to be. On the whole, I think she fancied this plan more than the other – it commended itself to her as being more uncomfortable and aggressive. It's not the fashion nowadays to be good by stealth."
Mrs. Quentin said to herself, "I didn't know how much he cared!" ”

“ Afterward we find that we must turn out for the obstacles – cross the rivers where they're shallowest – take the tracks that others have beaten – make all sorts of unexpected concessions. Life is made up of compromises: that is what youth refuses to understand. I've lived long enough to doubt whether any real good ever came of sacrificing beautiful facts to even more beautiful theories. ”

“ Quentin, at this revealing moment, saw for the first time how many elements of her son's character had seemed comprehensible simply because they were familiar: as, in reading a foreign language, we take the meaning of certain words for granted till the context corrects us. Often as in a given case, her maternal musings had figured his conduct, she now found herself at a loss to forecast it ”