Quotes from workThe Age of Innocence
The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by American author Edith Wharton. It was her twelfth novel, and was initially serialized in 1920 in four parts, in the magazine Pictorial Review. Later that year, it was released as a book by D. Appleton & Company. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize. Though the committee had initially agreed to give the award to Sinclair Lewis for Main Street, the judges, in rejecting his book on political grounds, "established Wharton as the American 'First Lady of Letters'". The story is set in the 1870s, in upper-class, "Gilded-Age" New York City. Wharton wrote the book in her 50s, after she had established herself as a strong author, with publishers clamoring for her work.
“Poetry and art are the breath of life to her.”
Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence
Source: The Age of Innocence
“It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.”
Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence
Source: The Age of Innocence (1920), Ch. 8
“And you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities.”
Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence
Source: The Age of Innocence
“Who's 'they'? Why don't you all get together and be 'they' yourselves?”
Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence
Source: The Age of Innocence
“We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?”
Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence
Source: The Age of Innocence
“Everything may be labelled- but everybody is not.”
Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence
Source: The Age of Innocence
“I can't love you unless I give you up.”
Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence
Source: The Age of Innocence (1920), Ch. 18
