I despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such whining sallow women, such utter absence of the amenities, such crass food, crass manners, crass landscape!! What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without the sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.

[B]ut he had lived in a world in which, as he said, no one who loved ideas need hunger mentally.

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

What is one's personality, detached from that of the friends with whom fate happens to have linked one? I cannot think of myself apart from the influence of the two or three greatest friendships of my life, and any account of my own growth must be that of their stimulating and enlightening influence.

What's the use of making mysteries? It only makes people want to nose 'em out.

Almost everybody in the neighborhood had troubles, frankly localized and specified; but only the chosen had complications. To have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death warrant. People struggled on for years wit

As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch.