The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton [0]
FROM THE PAGES OF THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
Title Page
Copyright Page
EDITH WHARTON
THE WORLD OF EDITH WHARTON AND THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
Introduction
BOOK ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
BOOK TWO
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
ENDNOTES
AN INSPIRATION FOR THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
FOR FURTHER READING
FROM THE PAGES OF
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
Few things seemed to Newland Archer more awful than an offense against “Taste,” that far-off divinity of whom “Form” was the mere visible representative and vicegerent.
(page 14)
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 nearer than any explanation would have done.
(page 16)
“If we don’t all stand together, there’ll be no such thing as Society left.”
(page 43)
He always came away with the feeling that if his world was small, so was theirs, and that the only way to enlarge either was to reach a stage of manners where they would naturally merge.
(page 86)
“I want to be free; I want to wipe out all the past.”
(page 90)
“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. The very good people didn’t convince me; I felt they’d never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands—and yet you hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I’d never known before—and it’s better than anything I’ve known.”
(page 141)
“It’s worth everything, isn’t it, to keep one’s intellectual liberty, not to enslave one’s powers of appreciation, one’s critical independence?”
(page 164)
His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen.
(page 185)
In the rotation of crops there was a recognized season for wild oats; but they were not to be sown more than once.
(page 249)
It was the old New York way, of taking life “without effusion of blood”; the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than “scenes,” except the behavior of those who gave rise to them.
(page 272)
The worst of doing one’s duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.
(pages 284-285)
He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.
(page 289)
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The Age of Innocence was first published in 1920.
Published in 2004 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction,
Notes, Biography, Inspired By, Comments & Questions,
and For Further Reading.
Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading
Copyright @ 2004 by Maureen Howard.
Note on Edith Wharton, The World of Edith Wharton and The Age of Innocence,
The Inspiration for The Age of Innocence, and Comments & Questions
Copyright @ 2004 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.
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The Age of Innocence