The Age of Innocence Quotes

What was or was not "the thing" played a part as important in Newland Archer's New York as the inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago. (1.4)

[Mr. Sillerton Jackson] knew all the ramifications of New York's cousinships; and could not only elucidate such complicated questions as that of the connection between the Mingotts (through the Tho...

[…] he could not have entered the Academy at a more significant moment than just as she was singing: "He loves me— he loves me not— he loves me!" […] (1.6)

"[…] The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!" She lifted her hands to her face, and he saw her thin shoulders shaken by a sob. (9.63)

And he contemplated her absorbed young face with a thrill of possessorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation was mingled with a tender reverence for her abysmal purity. (1.11)

Dreams, Hopes, and PlansFor a long moment she was silent; and in that moment Archer imagined her, stealing up behind him to throw her light arms about his neck. While he waited, soul and body throb...

The persons of their world lived in an atmosphere of faint implications and pale delicacies, and the fact that he and she understood each other without a word seemed to the young man to bring them...

[…] the girl received an expensive but incoherent education, which included "drawing from the model," a thing never dreamed of before, and playing the piano in quintets with professional musician...