But marriage is one long sacrifice.... Chapter 21, Medora Manson speaking to Newland Archer

We ought to be opening a bottle of wine!

You thought I was a lovelorn mistress; and I was only an expensive prostitute.

Since the Americans have ceased to have dyspepsia, they have lost the only thing that gave them any expression.

Only the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest know us enables us to live with them.

He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.

I shan't be lonely now. I was lonely; I was afraid. But the emptiness and the darkness are gone; when I turn back into myself now I'm like a child going at night into a room where there's always a light.