Edith Wharton Quote

He went on to praise the company they had just left, declaring that he knew no better way for a young man to form his mind than by frequenting the society of men of conflicting views and equal capacity. Nothing, said he, is more injurious to the growth of character than to be secluded from argument and opposition; as nothing is healthier than to be obliged to find good reasons for one’s beliefs on pain of surrendering them.

Edith Wharton

He went on to praise the company they had just left, declaring that he knew no better way for a young man to form his mind than by frequenting the society of men of conflicting views and equal capacity. Nothing, said he, is more injurious to the growth of character than to be secluded from argument and opposition; as nothing is healthier than to be obliged to find good reasons for one’s beliefs on pain of surrendering them.

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About Edith Wharton

Edith Newbold Wharton (; née Jones; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American writer and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray, realistically, the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel The Age of Innocence. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. Her other well-known works are The House of Mirth, the novella Ethan Frome, and several notable ghost stories.