"Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury. It was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in."

"Her failure was a useful preliminary to success."

"It was too late for happiness - but not too late to be helped by the thought of what I had missed. That is all I haved lived on - don't take it from me now"

"A smiling, bantering, humouring, watchful and incessant lie. A lie by day, a lie by night, a lie in every touch and every look; a lie in every caress and every quarrel; a lie in every word and in every silence."

"Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue."

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

"Little as she was addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from the empty noises of her life."

"No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity"

"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!"

"We shall hurt others less. Isn't it, after all, what you always wanted?"

"A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys."

"They stood together in the gloom of the spruces, an empty world glimmering about them wide and gray under the stars"

"I discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has helped me through several painful episodes."

"To have you here, you mean-in reach and yet out of reach? To meet you in this way, on the sly? It's the very reverse of what I want."

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

"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."

"Most timidities have such secret compensations and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self depreciation."

"...he arrived late at the office, perceived that his doing so made no difference whatever to any one, and was filled with sudden exasperation at the elaborate futility of his life"

"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."

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

"The boy was not insensitive, he knew; but he had the facility and self-confidence that came of looking at fate not as a master but as an equal."

"One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace"

"One of the great things about travel is you find out how many good, kind people there are."

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."

"Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one."

"Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting."

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."

"Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength."

"Our patience will achieve more than our force."

"Never apologise for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologise for the truth."

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." [Preface to Brissot's Address to His Constituents (1794)]"

"It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

"No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of "acting "and reasoning as fear."

"Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality."

"Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair."

"He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper."

"There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men."

"If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed."

"Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist."

"It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare."

"People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors."

"It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do."

"Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government."

"There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination."

"I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that the delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it."

"Kings will be tyrants by policy when subjects are rebels from principle."

"They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."