Traditions, norms, expectations. How often do they drive our decisions and shape our lives without us fully realizing it? How often do we look back at the big decisions and turning points in our lives and wonder what our lives might be like if we had taken a different path or acted with more courage?
Following your heart is sometimes complicated, as Newland Archer discovers in The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. And as much as the beautifully free-spirited Ellen Olenska lives unshackled from the fear of societal expectations, even she doesn’t necessarily get granted a happy life.
One thing is clear: duty is a poor substitute for romance, and worrying about what others will think is one of the fastest ways to ensure you never step out of your comfort zone.
For more insight from Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, check out these 11 quotes from the 1920 Pulitzer prize-winning novel.
11 Notable Quotes from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (with page numbers)
1. “It was one of the great livery-stableman’s most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.” – Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, pg. 3
2.”Women ought to be free—as free as we are”– Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, pg. 20
3. “It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.” – Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, pg. 30
4. “You like so much to be alone?” “Yes; as long as my friends keep me from feeling lonely.” – Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, pg. 35
5. “We can’t behave like people in novels, though, can we?” “Why not—why not—why not?”– Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, pg. 39
6. “It would take an omniscient Deity to know what you’re talking about.” – Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, pg. 40
7. “The individual, in such cases, is nearly always sacrificed to what is supposed to be the collective interest: people cling to any convention that keeps the family together—protects the children, if there are any” – Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, pg. 53
8. “Who’s ‘they’? Why don’t you all get together and be ‘they’ yourselves?” – Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, pg. 58
9. “Ah, good conversation—there’s nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.” – Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, pg. 92
10. “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.” – Edith Wharton, pg. 95
11. “If it were only to see her hand again I should have to follow her—.” – Edith Wharton, pg. 153
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