Book: The age of innocence

... Ignorance is not a virtue ...

... I'm not too prudent – when I'm happy, I prefer not to think about the future.

- Yes, I know: I know. But on condition that they do not hear anything unpleasant. Aunt Welland put it that way when I tried ... Doesn't anyone here want to know the truth, Mr. Archer? Real loneliness is living with these kind people who only ask you to pretend!

He mentally sorted through the marriages of his friends - supposedly happy - and found none that would even remotely correspond to the picture of the passionate and tender friendship that he drew for himself, thinking about them with May. He suddenly realized that this picture, which he so dreamed of, demanded from May freedom of judgment, experience, scope of thoughts - in short, all those traits, the absence of which in her diligently brought up. He was horrified by the premonition that their marriage was doomed to become like everyone else around him, a boring union of material and public interests, which was held together, on the one hand, by hypocrisy, and on the other by ignorance.

… Young people are so unreasonable and some women are so insidious.

... The anticipation of pleasure sometimes gave him a more thrill than the pleasure itself.

It is much easier to follow the traditions. There is no need to try to emancipate his wife if she does not know about his lack of freedom.

... watch out of boredom, she is the mother of all deadly sins.

In the fortress there is always a traitor, and when he (or often she) has already given the keys, whether to pretend that the fortress was impregnable?

What's the point of just doing secrets? It only leads to the fact that people are trying to sniff.

Surely no one here wants to know the truth, Mr. Archer? Living among all these kind people who only ask that you pretended to be - that is the real loneliness!

They say that to watch as the writhing sinners is a favorite pastime of the angels, but even they can hardly believe that people are much happier in hell.