The Age of Innocence -- Quotes

'thus keeping out the "new people" whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to'

the new Opera House - pg 3

'he was at heart a dilettante'

Newland Archer - pg 4

'lilies-of-the-valley'

May's flower - Biblical, the flower of the month May, humility, purity, motherhood, happiness, spring

'"she doesn't even guess what it's all about.'"

Archer thinking about May - pg 6

'turned their opera-glasses critically on the circle of ladies who were the product of the system.'

the men at the women of New York at the Opera - pg 7

'who Julius Beaufort, the banker, really was,'

about Beaufort - pg 9

“beauty—a gift which, in the eyes of New York, justified every success, and excused a certain number of failings.”

something “old Catherine never had” (pg 9)

'"I didn't think the Mingotts would have tried it on.'"

Sillerton Jackson, the authority on family, about Ellen's arrival - pg 9

'Beaufort had the audacity to hang "Love Victorious,"'

Beafort's decor - pg 19

'Few things seemed to Newland Archer more awful than an offence against "Taste,"‘

what Newland finds awful - pg 10

'Evidently she was always going to understand; she was always going to say the right thing.'

Newiland is happy with May - pg 21

'Nothing about his betrothed pleased him more than her resolute determination to carry to its utmost limit that ritual of ignoring the "unpleasant" in which they had both been brought up'

May and Newland ignoring the unpleasant - pg 22

'"Well, we need new blood and new money - "'

Mrs Mingott about NY - pg 27

'he thanked heaven that he was a New Yorker, and about to ally himself with one of his own kind.'

Newland about his future marriage - pg 27

'the Archer-Newland-van-der-Luyden tribe, who were devoted to travel, horticulture and the best fiction'

New York's tribal culture - pg 29

'"Beaufort is a vulgar man . . . My grandfather Newland always used to say to my mother 'Whatever you do, don't let that fellow Beaufort be introduced to the girls.'"'

Mrs Archer about Beaufort - pg 31

'"Women ought to be free - as free as we are,"'

Newland on freedom and women - pg 35

'What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?'

Newland thinks about him and May - pg 38

'the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess;'

Newland's thoughts on May - pg 38

'ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other'

Newland thinks about marriage - pg 38

'all this frankness and innocence we only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent,'

Innocence as a product, fakeness of NY society - pg 40

'if we don't all stand together, there'll be no such thing as Society left'

Mrs Archer about society after Ellen is snubbed - pg 43

'it was generally agreed in New York that the Countess Olenska had "lost her looks"'

New York about Ellen Olenska's beauty - pg 50

'they struck him as curiously immature compared to hers'

Archer compares the other faces at the van der Luyden's dinner to Ellen's eyes - pg 53

“heaven” -- “disrespectful”

Ellen calls New York __ , Newland finds it __

'he wondered if she did not begin to see what a powerful engine it was, an how nearly it had crushed her,'

Newland is shocked at Ellen's flippant attitude to New York - pg 63

'at a stroke she had pricked the van der Luydens and they collapsed.'

Ellen insightfully comments on the van der Luydens - pg 63

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

Ellen feels lonely in New York - pg 65

“I want to be free; I want to wipe out all the past,”

what Ellen wants

'a close-fitting armour of whale-boned silk, slightly open in the neck,'

'simple dinner dresses'- what the ladies wear - pg 88

'But my freedom - is that nothing?'

Ellen talks about what she would gain from divorcing Count Olenska - pg 94

'but the circumstances of his life . . . made him better worth talking to than many men, morally and socially his betters.'

Archer thinks about Beaufort and why Ellen enjoys his company - pg 116

'he asked himself if May's face was doomed to thicken into the same middle-aged image of invincible innocence,'

Archer looks and Mrs Welland and realises he doesn't want May to be like her - with 'invincible innocence' - pg 122

'he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience!'

what invincible innocence is - pg 122

'I couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong - an unfairness - to somebody else.'

May gives Archer the option to go with someone else, knowing he won't - pg 125

'you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference,'

Ellen talks about disloyalty to the 'tribe' -- pg 143

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

Ellen to Archer - imperfect happiness - pg 144

'the most sacred taboos of the prehistoric ritual,'

Edith Wharton uses very anthropological language describing the wedding rites - pg 150

'.. and when everything concerning the manners and customs of his little tribe had seemed to him fraught with world-wide significance,'

Archer begins to open his eyes to what NY society is - pg 151

'it was not "dignified" to force one's self on the notice of one's acquaintance in foreign countries.'

isolation of New Yorkers when in Europe - pg 159

'more Diana'like than ever.'

May as Diana - pg 161

'there was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmed notion that she was not free;'

Archer just accepts all the traditions of NY weddings, giving up on nonconformity - pg 162

'"Yes, but that's the only kind of target she'll ever hit."'

Beaufort is scornful and rude about May's archery - pg 176

'It had seemed so exactly the place in which he ought to have found Madame Olenska . . . and even the pink sunshade was not hers . . .'

Newland goes looking for Ellen - finds a pink sunshade, thinks it's hers but it's not - pg 189

'Observing from the lofty stand-point of a nonparticipant, she was able . . to track each new crack in its surface, and all the strange weeds pushing up between the ordered rows of social vegetables. '

Mrs Archer thinks NY is changing - pg 212

'Ah - I've had to. I've had to look at the Gorgon.'

Ellen talks about her realistic attitude made by her experiences - pg 239

'And you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities.'

Ellen tells Archer to stop his fantasies and look at reality - pg 240

'The room is stifling: I want a little air,'

Archer feels suffocated - pg 245

'And then it came over him . . . that to all of them he and Madame Olenska were lover's,'

Archer realises that everyone thinks he's having an affair with Ellen - pg 278

'It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease,'

NY society rejecting outsiders - pg 279

'we shall see our children fighting for invitations to swindlers' houses, and marrying Beaufort's bastards.'

Lefferts talks about the downfall of society - pg 281

'"No, I wasn't sure then - but I told her I was. And you see I was right!" she exclaimed, her blue eyes wet with victory.'

May realises she has won - pg 282

'You just sat and watched each other, and guessed at what was going on underneath.'

Dallas criticises Archer and May's relationship - pg 296

“After all, there was good in the old ways,”

Newland thinks back on Old New York

'"It's more real to me here than if I went up,"'

Newland doesn't go up to see Ellen - pg 300