“ it was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region. ”
Edith Wharton, House of Mirth (1905). copy citation
Author | Edith Wharton |
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Source | House of Mirth |
Topic | contempt world living |
Date | 1905 |
Language | English |
Reference | |
Note | |
Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/284/284-h/284-h.htm |
Context
“Hitherto, she had kept up a semblance of movement outside the main flow of the social current; but with the return to town, and the concentrating of scattered activities, the mere fact of not slipping back naturally into her old habits of life marked her as being unmistakably excluded from them. If one were not a part of the season's fixed routine, one swung unsphered in a void of social non-existence. Lily, for all her dissatisfied dreaming, had never really conceived the possibility of revolving about a different centre: it was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region. Her sense of irony never quite deserted her, and she could still note, with self-directed derision, the abnormal value suddenly acquired by the most tiresome and insignificant details of her former life.”
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