“I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.”

Edith Wharton
Life Positive

Explore This Quote Further

Quote by Edith Wharton: “I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I… - Image 1

Similar quotes

“I want to put my hand out and touch you. I want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you're sick and when you're lonesome.”


“Their bewilderment is so great that, when one of the girls spoke of archery clubs being fashionable in the States, somebody blurted out: "I suppose the Indians taught you?"; and I am constantly expecting to ask Mrs. St. George how she heats her wigwam in winter.”


“I couldn't have spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great flame. But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered, and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now and then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit perfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in my mind, just quietly trusting it to come true.”


“Sometimes life seems like a match between oneself and one's gaolors. The gaolers, of course, are one's mistakes; and the question is, who'll hold out longest? When I think of that, life instead of being too long, seems as short as a winter day....”


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


“I want - I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words like that -categories like that- won't exist. Where we shall be simply two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each other; and nothing else on earth will matter.”