The Age of Innocence Quotes

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country.

The Age of Innocence

So close to the powers of evil she must have lived that she still breathed more freely in their air.

The Age of Innocence

It was thus, Archer reflected, that New York managed its transitions; conspiring to ignore them till they were well over, and then, in all good faith, imagining that they had taken place in a preceding age.

The Age of Innocence

I felt there was no one as kind as you; no one who gave me reasons that I understood for doing what at first seemed so hard and--unnecessary.

The Age of Innocence

His own exclamation: “Women should be free—as free as we are,” struck to the root of a problem that it was agreed in his world to regard as nonexistent. “Nice” women, however wronged, would never claim the kind of freedom he meant, and gene...

The Age of Innocence

It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.

The Age of Innocence

The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!

The Age of Innocence

Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.

The Age of Innocence

Poor May!" he said. "Poor? Why poor?" she echoed with a strained laugh. "Because I shall never be able to open a window without worrying you," he rejoined, laughing also. For a moment she was silent; then she said very low, her head bowed over her wo...

The Age of Innocence

It was one of the great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.

The Age of Innocence

Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind of people who only ask one to pretend!

The Age of Innocence

She threw back her head with a laugh that made her chins ripple like little waves.

The Age of Innocence

Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the "new people" whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to

The Age of Innocence

I can't love you unless I give you up.

The Age of Innocence

Each time you happen to me all over again.

The Age of Innocence

The very good people did not convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands - and you hated the things it asked of one; you hated happiness bought by di...

The Age of Innocence

With a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.

The Age of Innocence

..but it seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, if breakable in prosperity, should be indissoluble in misfortune.

The Age of Innocence